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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, by M. Rutherford
+(##2 in our series by Mark Rutherford)
+
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+Title: Mark Rutherford's Deliverance
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5338]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 2, 2002]
+[Most recently updated: July 2, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--NEWSPAPERS
+
+
+
+When I had established myself in my new lodgings in Camden Town, I
+found I had ten pounds in my pocket, and again there was no outlook.
+I examined carefully every possibility.  At last I remembered that a
+relative of mine, who held some office in the House of Commons, added
+to his income by writing descriptive accounts of the debates,
+throwing in by way of supplement any stray scraps of gossip which he
+was enabled to collect.  The rules of the House as to the admission
+of strangers were not so strict then as they are now, and he assured
+me that if I could but secure a commission from a newspaper, he could
+pass me into one of the galleries, and, when there was nothing to be
+heard worth describing, I could remain in the lobby, where I should
+by degrees find many opportunities of picking up intelligence which
+would pay.  So far, so good; but how to obtain the commission?  I
+managed to get hold of a list of all the country papers, and I wrote
+to nearly every one, offering my services.  I am afraid that I
+somewhat exaggerated them, for I had two answers, and, after a little
+correspondence, two engagements.  This was an unexpected stroke of
+luck; but alas! both journals circulated in the same district.  I
+never could get together more stuff than would fill about a column
+and a half, and consequently I was obliged, with infinite pains, to
+vary, so that it could not be recognised, the form of what, at
+bottom, was essentially the same matter.  This was work which would
+have been disagreeable enough, if I had not now ceased in a great
+measure to demand what was agreeable.  In years past I coveted a
+life, not of mere sensual enjoyment--for that I never cared--but a
+life which should be filled with activities of the noblest kind, and
+it was intolerable to me to reflect that all my waking hours were in
+the main passed in merest drudgery, and that only for a few moments
+at the beginning or end of the day could it be said that the higher
+sympathies were really operative.  Existence to me was nothing but
+these few moments, and consequently flitted like a shadow.  I was
+now, however, the better of what was half disease and half something
+healthy and good.  In the first place, I had discovered that my
+appetite was far larger than my powers.  Consumed by a longing for
+continuous intercourse with the best, I had no ability whatever to
+maintain it, and I had accepted as a fact, however mysterious it
+might be, that the human mind is created with the impulses of a
+seraph and the strength of a man.  Furthermore, what was I that I
+should demand exceptional treatment?  Thousands of men and women
+superior to myself, are condemned, if that is the proper word to use,
+to almost total absence from themselves.  The roar of the world for
+them is never lulled to rest, nor can silence ever be secured in
+which the voice of the Divine can be heard.
+
+My letters were written twice a week, and as each contained a column
+and a half, I had six columns weekly to manufacture.  These I was in
+the habit of writing in the morning, my evenings being spent at the
+House.  At first I was rather interested, but after a while the
+occupation became tedious beyond measure, and for this reason.  In a
+discussion of any importance about fifty members perhaps would take
+part, and had made up their minds beforehand to speak.  There could
+not possibly be more than three or four reasons for or against the
+motion, and as the knowledge that what the intending orator had to
+urge had been urged a dozen times before on that very night never
+deterred him from urging it again, the same arguments, diluted,
+muddled, and mispresented, recurred with the most wearisome
+iteration.
+
+The public outside knew nothing or very little of the real House of
+Commons, and the manner in which time was squandered there, for the
+reports were all of them much abbreviated.  In fact, I doubt whether
+anybody but the Speaker, and one or two other persons in the same
+position as myself, really felt with proper intensity what the waste
+was, and how profound was the vanity of members and the itch for
+expression; for even the reporters were relieved at stated intervals,
+and the impression on their minds was not continuous.  Another evil
+result of these attendances at the House was a kind of political
+scepticism.  Over and over again I have seen a Government arraigned
+for its conduct of foreign affairs.  The evidence lay in masses of
+correspondence which it would have required some days to master, and
+the verdict, after knowing the facts, ought to have depended upon the
+application of principles, each of which admitted a contrary
+principle for which much might be pleaded.  There were not fifty
+members in the House with the leisure or the ability to understand
+what it was which had actually happened, and if they had understood
+it, they would not have had the wit to see what was the rule which
+ought to have decided the case.  Yet, whether they understood or not,
+they were obliged to vote, and what was worse, the constituencies
+also had to vote, and so the gravest matters were settled in utter
+ignorance.  This has often been adduced as an argument against an
+extended suffrage, but, if it is an argument against anything, it is
+an argument against intrusting the aristocracy and even the House
+itself with the destinies of the nation; for no dock labourer could
+possibly be more entirely empty of all reasons for action than the
+noble lords, squires, lawyers, and railway directors whom I have seen
+troop to the division bell.  There is something deeper than this
+scepticism, but the scepticism is the easiest and the most obvious
+conclusion to an open mind dealing so closely and practically with
+politics as it was my lot to do at this time of my life.  Men must be
+governed, and when it comes to the question, by whom? I, for one,
+would far sooner in the long run trust the people at large than I
+would the few, who in everything which relates to Government are as
+little instructed as the many and more difficult to move.  The very
+fickleness of the multitude, the theme of such constant declamation,
+is so far good that it proves a susceptibility to impressions to
+which men hedged round by impregnable conventionalities cannot yield.
+{1}
+
+When I was living in the country, the pure sky and the landscape
+formed a large portion of my existence, so large that much of myself
+depended on it, and I wondered how men could be worth anything if
+they could never see the face of nature.  For this belief my early
+training on the "Lyrical Ballads" is answerable.  When I came to
+London the same creed survived, and I was for ever thirsting for
+intercourse with my ancient friend.  Hope, faith, and God seemed
+impossible amidst the smoke of the streets.  It was now very
+difficult for me, except at rare opportunities, to leave London, and
+it was necessary for me, therefore, to understand that all that was
+essential for me was obtainable there, even though I should never see
+anything more than was to be seen in journeying through the High
+Street, Camden Town, Tottenham Court Road, the Seven Dials, and
+Whitehall.  I should have been guilty of a simple surrender to
+despair if I had not forced myself to make this discovery.  I cannot
+help saying, with all my love for the literature of my own day, that
+it has an evil side to it which none know except the millions of
+sensitive persons who are condemned to exist in great towns.  It
+might be imagined from much of this literature that true humanity and
+a belief in God are the offspring of the hills or the ocean; and by
+implication, if not expressly, the vast multitudes who hardly ever
+see the hills or the ocean must be without a religion.  The long
+poems which turn altogether upon scenery, perhaps in foreign lands,
+and the passionate devotion to it which they breathe, may perhaps do
+good in keeping alive in the hearts of men a determination to
+preserve air, earth, and water from pollution; but speaking from
+experience as a Londoner, I can testify that they are most
+depressing, and I would counsel everybody whose position is what mine
+was to avoid these books and to associate with those which will help
+him in his own circumstances.
+
+Half of my occupation soon came to an end.  One of my editors sent me
+a petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find out
+himself, and that he required something more "graphic and personal."
+I could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no worse than I had
+been doing.  These letters were a great trouble to me.  I was always
+conscious of writing so much of which I was not certain, and so much
+which was indifferent to me.  The unfairness of parties haunted me.
+But I continued to write, because I saw no other way of getting a
+living, and surely it is a baser dishonesty to depend upon the
+charity of friends because some pleasant, clean, ideal employment has
+not presented itself, than to soil one's hands with a little of the
+inevitable mud.  I don't think I ever felt anything more keenly than
+I did a sneer from an acquaintance of mine who was in the habit of
+borrowing money from me.  He was a painter, whose pictures were never
+sold because he never worked hard enough to know how to draw, and it
+came to my ears indirectly that he had said that "he would rather
+live the life of a medieval ascetic than condescend to the
+degradation of scribbling a dozen columns weekly of utter trash on
+subjects with which he had no concern."  At that very moment he owed
+me five pounds.  God knows that I admitted my dozen columns to be
+utter trash, but it ought to have been forgiven by those who saw that
+I was struggling to save myself from the streets and to keep a roof
+over my head.  Degraded, however, as I might be, I could not get down
+to the "graphic and personal," for it meant nothing less than the
+absolutely false.  I therefore contrived to exist on the one letter,
+which, excepting the mechanical labour of writing a second, took up
+as much of my time as if I had to write two.
+
+Never, but once or twice at the most, did my labours meet with the
+slightest recognition beyond payment.  Once I remember that I accused
+a member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the
+House, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to
+the editor denying the charge.  The editor without any inquiry--and I
+believe I was mistaken--instantly congratulated me on having
+"scored."  At another time, when Parliament was not sitting, I
+ventured, by way of filling up my allotted space, to say a word on
+behalf of a now utterly forgotten novel.  I had a letter from the
+authoress thanking me, but alas! the illusion vanished.  I was
+tempted by this one novel to look into others which I found she had
+written, and I discovered that they were altogether silly.  The
+attraction of the one of which I thought so highly, was due not to
+any real merit which it possessed, but to something I had put into
+it.  It was dead, but it had served as a wall to re-echo my own
+voice.  Excepting these two occasions, I don't think that one
+solitary human being ever applauded or condemned one solitary word of
+which I was the author.  All my friends knew where my contributions
+were to be found, but I never heard that they looked at them.  They
+were never worth reading, and yet such complete silence was rather
+lonely.  The tradesman who makes a good coat enjoys the satisfaction
+of having fitted and pleased his customer, and a bricklayer, if he be
+diligent, is rewarded by knowing that his master understands his
+value, but I never knew what it was to receive a single response.  I
+wrote for an abstraction; and spoke to empty space.  I cannot help
+claiming some pity and even respect for the class to which I
+belonged.  I have heard them called all kinds of hard names, hacks,
+drudges, and something even more contemptible, but the injustice done
+to them is monstrous.  Their wage is hardly earned; it is peculiarly
+precarious, depending altogether upon their health, and no matter how
+ill they may be they must maintain the liveliness of manner which is
+necessary to procure acceptance.  I fell in with one poor fellow
+whose line was something like my own.  I became acquainted with him
+through sitting side by side with him at the House.  He lived in
+lodgings in Goodge Street, and occasionally I walked with him as far
+as the corner of Tottenham Court Road, where I caught the last
+omnibus northward.  He wrote like me a "descriptive article" for the
+country, but he also wrote every now and then--a dignity to which I
+never attained--a "special" for London.  His "descriptive articles"
+were more political than mine, and he was obliged to be violently
+Tory.  His creed, however, was such a pure piece of professionalism,
+that though I was Radical, and was expected to be so, we never
+jarred, and often, as we wandered homewards, we exchanged notes, and
+were mutually useful, his observations appearing in my paper, and
+mine in his, with proper modifications.  How he used to roar in the
+Gazette against the opposite party, and yet I never heard anything
+from him myself but what was diffident and tender.  He had acquired,
+as an instrument necessary to him, an extraordinarily extravagant
+style, and he laid about him with a bludgeon, which inevitably
+descended on the heads of all prominent persons if they happened not
+to be Conservative, no matter what their virtues might be.  One
+peculiarity, however, I noted in him.  Although he ought every now
+and then, when the subject was uppermost, to have flamed out in the
+Gazette on behalf of the Church, I never saw a word from him on that
+subject.  He drew the line at religion.  He did not mind acting his
+part in things secular, for his performances were, I am sure, mostly
+histrionic, but there he stopped.  The unreality of his character was
+a husk surrounding him, but it did not touch the core.  It was as if
+he had said to himself, "Political controversy is nothing to me, and,
+what is more, is so uncertain that it matters little whether I say
+yes or no, nor indeed does it matter if I say yes AND no, and I must
+keep my wife and children from the workhouse; but when it comes to
+the relationship of man to God, it is a different matter."  His
+altogether outside vehemence and hypocrisy did in fact react upon
+him, and so far from affecting harmfully what lay deeper, produced a
+more complete sincerity and transparency extending even to the finest
+verbal distinctions.  Over and over again have I heard him preach to
+his wife, almost with pathos, the duty of perfect exactitude in
+speech in describing the commonest occurrences.  "Now, my dear, IS
+that so?" was a perpetual remonstrance with him; and he always
+insisted upon it that there is no training more necessary for
+children than that of teaching them not merely to speak the truth in
+the ordinary, vulgar sense of the term, but to speak it in a much
+higher sense, by rigidly compelling, point by point, a correspondence
+of the words with the fact external or internal.  He never would
+tolerate in his own children a mere hackneyed, borrowed expression,
+but demanded exact portraiture; and nothing vexed him more than to
+hear one of them spoil and make worthless what he or she had seen, by
+reporting it in some stale phrase which had been used by everybody.
+This refusal to take the trouble to watch the presentment to the mind
+of anything which had been placed before it, and to reproduce it in
+its own lines and colours was, as he said, nothing but falsehood, and
+he maintained that the principal reason why people are so
+uninteresting is not that they have nothing to say.  It is rather
+that they will not face the labour of saying in their own tongue what
+they have to say, but cover it up and conceal it in commonplace, so
+that we get, not what they themselves behold and what they think, but
+a hieroglyphic or symbol invented as the representative of a certain
+class of objects or emotions, and as inefficient to represent a
+particular object or emotion as x or y to set forth the relation of
+Hamlet to Ophelia.  He would even exercise his children in this art
+of the higher truthfulness, and would purposely make them give him an
+account of something which he had seen and they had seen, checking
+them the moment he saw a lapse from originality.  Such was the Tory
+correspondent of the Gazette.
+
+I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in his day it
+signified little or nothing whether Tory or Whig was in power.
+Politics had not become what they will one day become, a matter of
+life or death, dividing men with really private love and hate.  What
+a mockery controversy was in the House!  How often I have seen
+members, who were furious at one another across the floor, quietly
+shaking hands outside, and inviting one another to dinner!  I have
+heard them say that we ought to congratulate ourselves that
+parliamentary differences do not in this country breed personal
+animosities.  To me this seemed anything but a subject of
+congratulation.  Men who are totally at variance ought not to be
+friends, and if Radical and Tory are not totally, but merely
+superficially at variance, so much the worse for their Radicalism and
+Toryism.
+
+It is possible, and even probable, that the public fury and the
+subsequent amity were equally absurd.  Most of us have no real loves
+and no real hatreds.  Blessed is love, less blessed is hatred, but
+thrice accursed is that indifference which is neither one nor the
+other, the muddy mess which men call friendship.
+
+M'Kay--for that was his name--lived, as I have said, in Goodge
+Street, where he had unfurnished apartments.  I often spent part of
+the Sunday with him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by saying
+that I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself from
+inconsistency in denouncing members of Parliament for their
+duplicity, M'Kay and myself being also guilty of something very much
+like it.  But there was this difference between us and our
+parliamentary friends, that we always divested ourselves of all
+hypocrisy when we were alone.  We then dropped the stage costume
+which members continued to wear in the streets and at the dinner-
+table, and in which some of them even slept and said their prayers.
+
+London Sundays to persons who are not attached to any religious
+community, and have no money to spend, are rather dreary.  We tried
+several ways of getting through the morning.  If we heard that there
+was a preacher with a reputation, we went to hear him.  As a rule,
+however, we got no good in that way.  Once we came to a chapel where
+there was a minister supposed to be one of the greatest orators of
+the day.  We had much difficulty in finding standing room.  Just as
+we entered we heard him say, "My friends, I appeal to those of you
+who are parents.  You know that if you say to a child 'go,' he goeth,
+and if you say 'come,' he cometh.  So the Lord"--But at this point
+M'Kay, who had children, nudged me to come out; and out we went.  Why
+does this little scene remain with me?  I can hardly say, but here it
+stands.  It is remembered, not so much by reason of the preacher as
+by reason of the apparent acquiescence and admiration of the
+audience, who seemed to be perfectly willing to take over an
+experience from their pastor--if indeed it was really an experience--
+which was not their own.  Our usual haunts on Sunday were naturally
+the parks and Kensington Gardens; but artificial limited enclosures
+are apt to become wearisome after a time, and we longed for a little
+more freedom if a little less trim.  So we would stroll towards
+Hampstead or Highgate, the only drawback to these regions being the
+squalid, ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it was
+necessary to pass.  The skirts of London when the air is filled with
+north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the least
+cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wandering
+masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves.  At the
+corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to be
+devoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generally
+encamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts.  Swarms of people
+lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-house
+to open.  Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are not
+exhilarating, but the costermonger found many customers who bought
+his nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing better to do.
+We went two or three times to a freethinking hall, where we were
+entertained with demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs
+and Jewish heroes, and arguments to prove that the personal existence
+of the devil was a myth, the audience breaking out into uproarious
+laughter at comical delineations of Noah and Jonah.  One morning we
+found the place completely packed.  A "celebrated Christian," as he
+was described to us, having heard of the hall, had volunteered to
+engage in debate on the claims of the Old Testament to Divine
+authority.  He turned out to be a preacher whom we knew quite well.
+He was introduced by his freethinking antagonist, who claimed for him
+a respectful hearing.  The preacher said that before beginning he
+should like to "engage in prayer."  Accordingly he came to the front
+of the platform, lifted up his eyes, told God why he was there, and
+besought Him to bless the discussion in the conversion "of these poor
+wandering souls, who have said in their hearts that there is no God,
+to a saving faith in Him and in the blood of Christ."  I expected
+that some resentment would be displayed when the wandering souls
+found themselves treated like errant sheep, but to my surprise they
+listened with perfect silence; and when he had said "Amen," there
+were great clappings of hands, and cries of "Bravo."  They evidently
+considered the prayer merely as an elocutionary show-piece.  The
+preacher was much disconcerted, but he recovered himself, and began
+his sermon, for it was nothing more.  He enlarged on the fact that
+men of the highest eminence had believed in the Old Testament.  Locke
+and Newton had believed in it, and did it not prove arrogance in us
+to doubt when the "gigantic intellect which had swept the skies, and
+had announced the law which bound the universe together was
+satisfied?"  The witness of the Old Testament to the New was another
+argument, but his main reliance was upon the prophecies.  From Adam
+to Isaiah there was a continuous prefigurement of Christ.  Christ was
+the point to which everything tended; and "now, my friends," he said,
+"I cannot sit down without imploring you to turn your eyes on Him who
+never yet repelled the sinner, to wash in that eternal Fountain ever
+open for the remission of sins, and to flee from the wrath to come.
+I believe the sacred symbol of the cross has not yet lost its
+efficacy.  For eighteen hundred years, whenever it has been exhibited
+to the sons of men, it has been potent to reclaim and save them.  'I,
+if I be lifted up,' cried the Great Sufferer, 'will draw all men unto
+Me,' and He has drawn not merely the poor and ignorant but the
+philosopher and the sage.  Oh, my brethren, think what will happen if
+you reject Him.  I forbear to paint your doom.  And think again, on
+the other hand, of the bliss which awaits you if you receive Him, of
+the eternal companionship with the Most High and with the spirits of
+just men made perfect."  His hearers again applauded vigorously, and
+none less so than their appointed leader, who was to follow on the
+other side.  He was a little man with small eyes; his shaven face was
+dark with a black beard lurking under the skin, and his nose was
+slightly turned up.  He was evidently a trained debater who had
+practised under railway arches, discussion "forums," and in the
+classes promoted by his sect.  He began by saying that he could not
+compliment his friend who had just sat down on the inducements which
+he had offered them to become Christians.  The New Cut was not a nice
+place on a wet day, but he had rather sit at a stall there all day
+long with his feet on a basket than lie in the bosom of some of the
+just men made perfect portrayed in the Bible.  Nor, being married,
+should he feel particularly at ease if he had to leave his wife with
+David.  David certainly ought to have got beyond all that kind of
+thing, considering it must be over 3000 years since he first saw
+Bathsheba; but we are told that the saints are for ever young in
+heaven, and this treacherous villain, who would have been tried by a
+jury of twelve men and hung outside Newgate if he had lived in the
+nineteenth century, might be dangerous now.  He was an amorous old
+gentleman up to the very last.  (Roars of laughter.)  Nor did the
+speaker feel particularly anxious to be shut up with all the bishops,
+who of course are amongst the elect, and on their departure from this
+vale of tears tempered by ten thousand a year, are duly supplied with
+wings.  Much more followed in the same strain upon the immorality of
+the Bible heroes, their cruelty, and the cruelty of the God who
+sanctioned it.  Then followed a clever exposition of the
+inconsistencies of the Old Testament history, the impossibility of
+any reference to Jesus therein, and a really earnest protest against
+the quibbling by which those who believed in the Bible as a
+revelation sought to reconcile it with science.  "Finally," said the
+speaker, "I am sure we all of us will pass a vote of thanks to our
+reverend friend for coming to see us, and we cordially invite him to
+come again.  If I might be allowed to offer a suggestion, it would be
+that he should make himself acquainted with our case before he pays
+us another visit, and not suppose that we are to be persuaded with
+the rhetoric which may do very well for the young women of his
+congregation, but won't go down here."  This was fair and just, for
+the eminent Christian was nothing but an ordinary minister, who, when
+he was prepared for his profession, had never been allowed to see
+what are the historical difficulties of Christianity, lest he should
+be overcome by them.  On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were
+almost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the great remains of
+antiquity, and would probably have considered the machinery of the
+Prometheus Bound or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer.
+That they should spend their time in picking the Bible to pieces when
+there was so much positive work for them to do, seemed to me as
+melancholy as if they had spent themselves upon theology.  To waste a
+Sunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of Jonah was surely
+as imbecile as to waste it in proving their verbal veracity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--M'KAY
+
+
+
+It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street.  The
+churches and chapels were emptying themselves, but the great mass of
+the population had been "nowhere."  I had dinner with M'Kay, and as
+the day wore on the fog thickened.  London on a dark Sunday
+afternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is depressing.  The
+inhabitants drag themselves hither and thither in languor and
+uncertainty.  Small mobs loiter at the doors of the gin palaces.
+Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling "walnuts" with a cry so
+melancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may be
+imagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by the
+monotony of a million years.
+
+About two or three o'clock decent working men in their best clothes
+emerge from the houses in such streets as Nassau Street.  It is part
+of their duty to go out after dinner on Sunday with the wife and
+children.  The husband pushes the perambulator out of the dingy
+passage, and gazes doubtfully this way and that way, not knowing
+whither to go, and evidently longing for the Monday, when his work,
+however disagreeable it may be, will be his plain duty.  The wife
+follows carrying a child, and a boy and girl in unaccustomed apparel
+walk by her side.  They come out into Mortimer Street.  There are no
+shops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the earth is mud under
+their feet, the muddy houses stretch in long rows, black, gaunt,
+uniform.  The little party reach Hyde Park, also wrapped in
+impenetrable mud-grey.  The man's face brightens for a moment as he
+says, "It is time to go back," and so they return, without the
+interchange of a word, unless perhaps they happen to see an omnibus
+horse fall down on the greasy stones.  What is there worth thought or
+speech on such an expedition?  Nothing!  The tradesman who kept the
+oil and colour establishment opposite to us was not to be tempted
+outside.  It was a little more comfortable than Nassau Street, and,
+moreover, he was religious and did not encourage Sabbath-breaking.
+He and his family always moved after their mid-day Sabbath repast
+from the little back room behind the shop up to what they called the
+drawing-room overhead.  It was impossible to avoid seeing them every
+time we went to the window.  The father of the family, after his
+heavy meal, invariably sat in the easy-chair with a handkerchief over
+his eyes and slept.  The children were always at the windows,
+pretending to read books, but in reality watching the people below.
+At about four o'clock their papa generally awoke, and demanded a
+succession of hymn tunes played on the piano.  When the weather
+permitted, the lower sash was opened a little, and the neighbours
+were indulged with the performance of "Vital Spark," the father
+"coming in" now and then with a bass note or two at the end where he
+was tolerably certain of the harmony.  At five o'clock a prophecy of
+the incoming tea brought us some relief from the contemplation of the
+landscape or brick-scape.  I say "some relief," for meals at M'Kay's
+were a little disagreeable.  His wife was an honest, good little
+woman, but so much attached to him and so dependent on him that she
+was his mere echo.  She had no opinions which were not his, and
+whenever he said anything which went beyond the ordinary affairs of
+the house, she listened with curious effort, and generally responded
+by a weakened repetition of M'Kay's own observations.  He
+perpetually, therefore, had before him an enfeebled reflection of
+himself, and this much irritated him, notwithstanding his love for
+her; for who could help loving a woman who, without the least
+hesitation, would have opened her veins at his command, and have
+given up every drop of blood in her body for him?  Over and over
+again I have heard him offer some criticism on a person or event, and
+the customary chime of approval would ensue, provoking him to such a
+degree that he would instantly contradict himself with much
+bitterness, leaving poor Mrs. M'Kay in much perplexity.  Such a shot
+as this generally reduced her to timid silence.  As a rule, he always
+discouraged any topic at his house which was likely to serve as an
+occasion for showing his wife's dependence on him.  He designedly
+talked about her household affairs, asked her whether she had mended
+his clothes and ordered the coals.  She knew that these things were
+not what was upon his mind, and she answered him in despairing tones,
+which showed how much she felt the obtrusive condescension to her
+level.  I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion at
+the sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame me
+and I was obliged to get up and go.  She was childishly affectionate.
+If M'Kay came in and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her face
+brightened into the sweetest and happiest smile.  I recollect once
+after he had been unusually annoyed with her he repented just as he
+was leaving home, and put his lips to her head, holding it in both
+his hands.  I saw her gently take the hand from her forehead and
+press it to her mouth, the tears falling down her cheek meanwhile.
+Nothing would ever tempt her to admit anything against her husband.
+M'Kay was violent and unjust at times.  His occupation he hated, and
+his restless repugnance to it frequently discharged itself
+indifferently upon everything which came in his way.  His children
+often thought him almost barbarous, but in truth he did not actually
+see them when he was in one of these moods.  What was really present
+with him, excluding everything else, was the sting of something more
+than usually repulsive of which they knew nothing.  Mrs. M'Kay's
+answer to her children's remonstrances when they were alone with her
+always was, "He is so worried," and she invariably dwelt upon their
+faults which had given him the opportunity for his wrath.
+
+I think M'Kay's treatment of her wholly wrong.  I think that he ought
+not to have imposed himself upon her so imperiously.  I think he
+ought to have striven to ascertain what lay concealed in that modest
+heart, to have encouraged its expression and development, to have
+debased himself before her that she might receive courage to rise,
+and he would have found that she had something which he had not; not
+HIS something perhaps, but something which would have made his life
+happier.  As it was, he stood upon his own ground above her.  If she
+could reach him, well and good, if not, the helping hand was not
+proffered, and she fell back, hopeless.  Later on he discovered his
+mistake.  She became ill very gradually, and M'Kay began to see in
+the distance a prospect of losing her.  A frightful pit came in view.
+He became aware that he could not do without her.  He imagined what
+his home would have been with other women whom he knew, and he
+confessed that with them he would have been less contented.  He
+acknowledged that he had been guilty of a kind of criminal epicurism;
+that he rejected in foolish, fatal, nay, even wicked indifference,
+the bread of life upon which he might have lived and thriven.  His
+whole effort now was to suppress himself in his wife.  He read to
+her, a thing he never did before, and when she misunderstood, he
+patiently explained; he took her into his counsels and asked her
+opinion; he abandoned his own opinion for hers, and in the presence
+of her children he always deferred to her, and delighted to
+acknowledge that she knew more than he did, that she was right and he
+was wrong.  She was now confined to her house, and the end was near,
+but this was the most blessed time of her married life.  She grew
+under the soft rain of his loving care, and opened out, not, indeed,
+into an oriental flower, rich in profound mystery of scent and
+colour, but into a blossom of the chalk-down.  Altogether concealed
+and closed she would have remained if it had not been for this
+beneficent and heavenly gift poured upon her.  He had just time
+enough to see what she really was, and then she died.  There are some
+natures that cannot unfold under pressure or in the presence of
+unregarding power.  Hers was one.  They require a clear space round
+them, the removal of everything which may overmaster them, and
+constant delicate attention.  They require too a recognition of the
+fact, which M'Kay for a long time did not recognise, that it is folly
+to force them and to demand of them that they shall be what they
+cannot be.  I stood by the grave this morning of my poor, pale,
+clinging little friend now for some years at peace, and I thought
+that the tragedy of Promethean torture or Christ-like crucifixion may
+indeed be tremendous, but there is a tragedy too in the existence of
+a soul like hers, conscious of its feebleness and ever striving to
+overpass it, ever aware that it is an obstacle to the return of the
+affection of the man whom she loves.
+
+Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M'Kay's, and when we
+wanted to talk we went out of doors.  The evening after our visit to
+the debating hall we moved towards Portland Place, and walked up and
+down there for an hour or more.  M'Kay had a passionate desire to
+reform the world.  The spectacle of the misery of London, and of the
+distracted swaying hither and thither of the multitudes who inhabit
+it, tormented him incessantly.  He always chafed at it, and he never
+seemed sure that he had a right to the enjoyment of the simplest
+pleasures so long as London was before him.  What a farce, he would
+cry, is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when millions
+of wretched mortals are doomed to the eternal darkness and crime of
+the city!  Here are the educated classes occupying themselves with
+exquisite emotions, with speculations upon the Infinite, with
+addresses to flowers, with the worship of waterfalls and flying
+clouds, and with the incessant portraiture of a thousand moods and
+variations of love, while their neighbours lie grovelling in the
+mire, and never know anything more of life or its duties than is
+afforded them by a police report in a bit of newspaper picked out of
+the kennel.  We went one evening to hear a great violin-player, who
+played such music, and so exquisitely, that the limits of life were
+removed.  But we had to walk up the Haymarket home, between eleven
+and twelve o'clock, and the violin-playing became the merest
+trifling.  M'Kay had been brought up upon the Bible.  He had before
+him, not only there, but in the history of all great religious
+movements, a record of the improvement of the human race, or of large
+portions of it, not merely by gradual civilisation, but by
+inspiration spreading itself suddenly.  He could not get it out of
+his head that something of this kind is possible again in our time.
+He longed to try for himself in his own poor way in one of the slums
+about Drury Lane.  I sympathised with him, but I asked him what he
+had to say.  I remember telling him that I had been into St. Paul's
+Cathedral, and that I pictured to myself the cathedral full, and
+myself in the pulpit.  I was excited while imagining the opportunity
+offered me of delivering some message to three or four thousand
+persons in such a building, but in a minute or two I discovered that
+my sermon would be very nearly as follows:  "Dear friends, I know no
+more than you know; we had better go home."  I admitted to him that
+if he could believe in hell-fire, or if he could proclaim the Second
+Advent, as Paul did to the Thessalonians, and get people to believe,
+he might change their manners, but otherwise he could do nothing but
+resort to a much slower process.  With the departure of a belief in
+the supernatural departs once and for ever the chance of regenerating
+the race except by the school and by science. {2}  However, M'Kay
+thought he would try.  His earnestness was rather a hindrance than a
+help to him, for it prevented his putting certain important questions
+to himself, or at any rate it prevented his waiting for distinct
+answers.  He recurred to the apostles and Bunyan, and was convinced
+that it was possible even now to touch depraved men and women with an
+idea which should recast their lives.  So it is that the main
+obstacle to our success is a success which has preceded us.  We
+instinctively follow the antecedent form, and consequently we either
+pass by, or deny altogether, the life of our own time, because its
+expression has changed.  We never do practically believe that the
+Messiah is not incarnated twice in the same flesh.  He came as Jesus,
+and we look for Him as Jesus now, overlooking the manifestation of
+to-day, and dying, perhaps, without recognising it.
+
+M'Kay had found a room near Parker Street, Drury Lane, in which he
+proposed to begin, and that night, as we trod the pavement of
+Portland Place, he propounded his plans to me, I listening without
+much confidence, but loth nevertheless to take the office of Time
+upon myself, and to disprove what experience would disprove more
+effectually.  His object was nothing less than gradually to attract
+Drury Lane to come and be saved.
+
+The first Sunday I went with him to the room.  As we walked over the
+Drury Lane gratings of the cellars a most foul stench came up, and
+one in particular I remember to this day.  A man half dressed pushed
+open a broken window beneath us, just as we passed by, and there
+issued such a blast of corruption, made up of gases bred by filth,
+air breathed and rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours of
+unnameable personal uncleanness and disease, that I staggered to the
+gutter with a qualm which I could scarcely conquer.  At the doors of
+the houses stood grimy women with their arms folded and their hair
+disordered.  Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope to broken
+railings, and were swinging on it.  The common door to a score of
+lodgings stood ever open, and the children swarmed up and down the
+stairs carrying with them patches of mud every time they came in from
+the street.  The wholesome practice which amongst the decent poor
+marks off at least one day in the week as a day on which there is to
+be a change; when there is to be some attempt to procure order and
+cleanliness; a day to be preceded by soap and water, by shaving, and
+by as many clean clothes as can be procured, was unknown here.  There
+was no break in the uniformity of squalor; nor was it even possible
+for any single family to emerge amidst such altogether suppressive
+surroundings.  All self-respect, all effort to do anything more than
+to satisfy somehow the grossest wants, had departed.  The shops were
+open; most of them exhibiting a most miscellaneous collection of
+goods, such as bacon cut in slices, fire-wood, a few loaves of bread,
+and sweetmeats in dirty bottles.  Fowls, strange to say, black as the
+flagstones, walked in and out of these shops, or descended into the
+dark areas.  The undertaker had not put up his shutters.  He had
+drawn down a yellow blind, on which was painted a picture of a
+suburban cemetery.  Two funerals, the loftiest effort of his craft,
+were depicted approaching the gates.  When the gas was alight behind
+the blind, an effect was produced which was doubtless much admired.
+He also displayed in his window a model coffin, a work of art.  It
+was about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass nails,
+and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross stretching from end to
+end.  The desire to decorate existence in some way or other with more
+or less care is nearly universal.  The most sensual and the meanest
+almost always manifest an indisposition to be content with mere
+material satisfaction.  I have known selfish, gluttonous, drunken men
+spend their leisure moments in trimming a bed of scarlet geraniums,
+and the vulgarest and most commonplace of mortals considers it a
+necessity to put a picture in the room or an ornament on the
+mantelpiece.  The instinct, even in its lowest forms, is divine.  It
+is the commentary on the text that man shall not live by bread alone.
+It is evidence of an acknowledged compulsion--of which art is the
+highest manifestation--to ESCAPE.  In the alleys behind Drury Lane
+this instinct, the very salt of life, was dead, crushed out utterly,
+a symptom which seemed to me ominous, and even awful to the last
+degree.  The only house in which it survived was in that of the
+undertaker, who displayed the willows, the black horses, and the
+coffin.  These may have been nothing more than an advertisement, but
+from the care with which the cross was elaborated, and the neatness
+with which it was made to resemble a natural piece of wood, I am
+inclined to believe that the man felt some pleasure in his work for
+its own sake, and that he was not utterly submerged.  The cross in
+such dens as these, or, worse than dens, in such sewers!  If it be
+anything, it is a symbol of victory, of power to triumph over
+resistance, and even death.  Here was nothing but sullen subjugation,
+the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only by a tendency to mutiny.
+Here was a strength of circumstance to quell and dominate which
+neither Jesus nor Paul could have overcome--worse a thousandfold than
+Scribes or Pharisees, or any form of persecution.  The preaching of
+Jesus would have been powerless here; in fact, no known stimulus,
+nothing ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can do
+anything in the back streets of great cities so long as they are the
+cesspools which they are now.
+
+We came to the room.  About a score of M'Kay's own friends were
+there, and perhaps half-a-dozen outsiders, attracted by the notice
+which had been pasted on a board at the entrance.  M'Kay announced
+his errand.  The ignorance and misery of London he said were
+intolerable to him.  He could not take any pleasure in life when he
+thought upon them.  What could he do? that was the question.  He was
+not a man of wealth.  He could not buy up these hovels.  He could not
+force an entrance into them and persuade their inhabitants to improve
+themselves.  He had no talents wherewith to found a great
+organisation or create public opinion.  He had determined, after much
+thought, to do what he was now doing.  It was very little, but it was
+all he could undertake.  He proposed to keep this room open as a
+place to which those who wished might resort at different times, and
+find some quietude, instruction, and what fortifying thoughts he
+could collect to enable men to endure their almost unendurable
+sufferings.  He did not intend to teach theology.  Anything which
+would be serviceable he would set forth, but in the main he intended
+to rely on holding up the examples of those who were greater than
+ourselves and were our redeemers.  He meant to teach Christ in the
+proper sense of the word.  Christ now is admired probably more than
+He had ever been.  Everybody agrees to admire Him, but where are the
+people who really do what He did?  There is no religion now-a-days.
+Religion is a mere literature.  Cultivated persons sit in their
+studies and write overflowingly about Jesus, or meet at parties and
+talk about Him; but He is not of much use to me unless I say to
+myself, HOW IS IT WITH THEE? unless I myself become what He was.
+This was the meaning of Jesus to the Apostle Paul.  Jesus was in him;
+he had put on Jesus; that is to say, Jesus lived in him like a second
+soul, taking the place of his own soul and directing him accordingly.
+That was religion, and it is absurd to say that the English nation at
+this moment, or any section of it, is religious.  Its educated
+classes are inhabited by a hundred minds.  We are in a state of
+anarchy, each of us with a different aim and shaping himself
+according to a different type; while the uneducated classes are
+entirely given over to the "natural man."  He was firmly persuaded
+that we need religion, poor and rich alike.  We need some controlling
+influence to bind together our scattered energies.  We do not know
+what we are doing.  We read one book one day and another book another
+day, but it is idle wandering to right and left; it is not advancing
+on a straight road.  It is not possible to bind ourselves down to a
+certain defined course, but still it is an enormous, an incalculable
+advantage for us to have some irreversible standard set up in us by
+which everything we meet is to be judged.  That is the meaning of the
+prophecy--whether it will ever be fulfilled God only knows--that
+Christ shall judge the world.  All religions have been this.  They
+have said that in the midst of the infinitely possible--infinitely
+possible evil and infinitely possible good too--we become distracted.
+A thousand forces good and bad act upon us.  It is necessary, if we
+are to be men, if we are to be saved, that we should be rescued from
+this tumult, and that our feet should be planted upon a path.  His
+object, therefore, would be to preach Christ, as before said, and to
+introduce into human life His unifying influence.  He would try and
+get them to see things with the eyes of Christ, to love with His
+love, to judge with His judgment.  He believed Christ was fitted to
+occupy this place.  He deliberately chose Christ as worthy to be our
+central, shaping force.  He would try by degrees to prove this; to
+prove that Christ's way of dealing with life is the best way, and so
+to create a genuinely Christian spirit, which, when any choice of
+conduct is presented to us, will prompt us to ask first of all, HOW
+WOULD CHRIST HAVE IT? or, when men and things pass before us, will
+decide through him what we have to say about them.  M'Kay added that
+he hoped his efforts would not be confined to talking.  He trusted to
+be able, by means of this little meeting, gradually to gain
+admittance for himself and his friends into the houses of the poor
+and do some practical good.  At present he had no organisation and no
+plans.  He did not believe in organisation and plans preceding a
+clear conception of what was to be accomplished.  Such, as nearly as
+I can now recollect, is an outline of his discourse.  It was
+thoroughly characteristic of him.  He always talked in this fashion.
+He was for ever insisting on the aimlessness of modern life, on the
+powerlessness of its vague activities to mould men into anything
+good, to restrain them from evil or moderate their passions, and he
+was possessed by a vision of a new Christianity which was to take the
+place of the old and dead theologies.  I have reported him in my own
+language.  He strove as much as he could to make his meaning plain to
+everybody.  Just before he finished, three or four out of the half-a-
+dozen outsiders who were present whistled with all their might and
+ran down the stairs shouting to one another.  As we went out they had
+collected about the door, and amused themselves by pushing one
+another against us, and kicking an old kettle behind us and amongst
+us all the way up the street, so that we were covered with splashes.
+Mrs. M'Kay went with us, and when we reached home, she tried to say
+something about what she had heard.  The cloud came over her
+husband's face at once; he remained silent for a minute, and getting
+up and going to the window, observed that it ought to be cleaned, and
+that he could hardly see the opposite house.  The poor woman looked
+distressed, and I was just about to come to her rescue by continuing
+what she had been saying, when she rose, not in anger, but in
+trouble, and went upstairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--MISS LEROY
+
+
+
+During the great French war there were many French prisoners in my
+native town.  They led a strange isolated life, for they knew nothing
+of our language, nor, in those days, did three people in the town
+understand theirs.  The common soldiers amused themselves by making
+little trifles and selling them.  I have now before me a box of
+coloured straw with the date 1799 on the bottom, which was bought by
+my grandfather.  One of these prisoners was an officer named Leroy.
+Why he did not go back to France I never heard, but I know that
+before I was born he was living near our house on a small income;
+that he tried to teach French, and that he had as his companion a
+handsome daughter who grew up speaking English.  What she was like
+when she was young I cannot say, but I have had her described to me
+over and over again.  She had rather darkish brown hair, and she was
+tall and straight as an arrow.  This she was, by the way, even into
+old age.  She surprised, shocked, and attracted all the sober persons
+in our circle.  Her ways were not their ways.  She would walk out by
+herself on a starry night without a single companion, and cause
+thereby infinite talk, which would have converged to a single focus
+if it had not happened that she was also in the habit of walking out
+at four o'clock on a summer's morning, and that in the church porch
+of a little village not far from us, which was her favourite resting-
+place, a copy of the De Imitatione Christi was found which belonged
+to her.  So the talk was scattered again and its convergence
+prevented.  She used to say doubtful things about love.  One of them
+struck my mother with horror.  Miss Leroy told a male person once,
+and told him to his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, and
+they agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a cross as a
+ceremony, it would be as good to her as marriage.  This may seem a
+trifle, but nobody now can imagine what was thought of it at the time
+it was spoken.  My mother repeated it every now and then for fifty
+years.  It may be conjectured how easily any other girls of our
+acquaintance would have been classified, and justly classified, if
+they had uttered such barefaced Continental immorality.  Miss Leroy's
+neighbours were remarkably apt at classifying their fellow-creatures.
+They had a few, a very few holes, into which they dropped their
+neighbours, and they must go into one or the other.  Nothing was more
+distressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violence
+which might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained an
+exception.  Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of his
+generalisation, and having heard of this and other observations
+accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her.  What
+she said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards of
+mentioning her name, and when he did he was wont to declare that she
+was "a rum un."  She was not particular, I have heard, about personal
+tidiness, and this I can well believe, for she was certainly not
+distinguished when I knew her for this virtue.  She cared nothing for
+the linen-closet, the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker,
+which were the true household gods of the respectable women of those
+days.  She would have been instantly set down as "slut," and as
+having "nasty dirty forrin ways," if a peculiar habit of hers had not
+unfortunately presented itself, most irritating to her critics, so
+anxious promptly to gratify their philosophic tendency towards
+scientific grouping.  Mrs. Mobbs, who lived next door to her, averred
+that she always slept with the window open.  Mrs. Mobbs, like
+everybody else, never opened her window except to "air the room."
+Mrs. Mobbs' best bedroom was carpeted all over, and contained a great
+four-post bedstead, hung round with heavy hangings, and protected at
+the top from draughts by a kind of firmament of white dimity.  Mrs.
+Mobbs stuffed a sack of straw up the chimney of the fireplace, to
+prevent the fall of the "sutt," as she called it.  Mrs. Mobbs, if she
+had a visitor, gave her a hot supper, and expected her immediately
+afterwards to go upstairs, draw the window curtains, get into this
+bed, draw the bed curtains also, and wake up the next morning
+"bilious."  This was the proper thing to do.  Miss Leroy's sitting-
+room was decidedly disorderly; the chairs were dusty; "yer might
+write yer name on the table," Mrs. Mobbs declared; but, nevertheless,
+the casement was never closed night nor day; and, moreover, Miss
+Leroy was believed by the strongest circumstantial evidence to wash
+herself all over every morning, a habit which Mrs. Mobbs thought
+"weakening," and somehow connected with ethical impropriety.  When
+Miss Leroy was married, and first as an elderly woman became known to
+me, she was very inconsequential in her opinions, or at least
+appeared so to our eyes.  She must have been much more so when she
+was younger.  In our town we were all formed upon recognised
+patterns, and those who possessed any one mark of the pattern, had
+all.  The wine-merchant, for example, who went to church, eminently
+respectable, Tory, by no means associating with the tradesfolk who
+displayed their goods in the windows, knowing no "experience," and
+who had never felt the outpouring of the Spirit, was a specimen of a
+class like him.  Another class was represented by the dissenting
+ironmonger, deacon, presiding at prayer-meetings, strict Sabbatarian,
+and believer in eternal punishments; while a third was set forth by
+"Guffy," whose real name was unknown, who got drunk, unloaded barges,
+assisted at the municipal elections, and was never once seen inside a
+place of worship.  These patterns had existed amongst us from the
+dimmest antiquity, and were accepted as part of the eternal order of
+things; so much so, that the deacon, although he professed to be sure
+that nobody who had not been converted would escape the fire--and the
+wine-merchant certainly had not been converted--was very far from
+admitting to himself that the wine-merchant ought to be converted, or
+that it would be proper to try and convert him.  I doubt, indeed,
+whether our congregation would have been happy, or would have thought
+any the better of him, if he had left the church.  Such an event,
+however, could no more come within the reach of our vision than a
+reversal of the current of our river.  It would have broken up our
+foundations and party-walls, and would have been considered as
+ominous, and anything but a subject for thankfulness.  But Miss Leroy
+was not the wine-merchant, nor the ironmonger, nor Guffy, and even
+now I cannot trace the hidden centre of union from which sprang so
+much that was apparently irreconcilable.  She was a person whom
+nobody could have created in writing a novel, because she was so
+inconsistent.  As I have said before, she studied Thomas a Kempis,
+and her little French Bible was brown with constant use.  But then
+she read much fiction in which there were scenes which would have
+made our hair stand on end.  The only thing she constantly abhorred
+in books was what was dull and opaque.  Yet, as we shall see
+presently, her dislike to dulness, once at least in her life, notably
+failed her.  She was not Catholic, and professed herself Protestant,
+but such a Protestantism!  She had no sceptical doubts.  She believed
+implicitly that the Bible was the Word of God, and that everything in
+it was true, but her interpretation of it was of the strangest kind.
+Almost all our great doctrines seemed shrunk to nothing in her eyes,
+while others, which were nothing to us, were all-important to her.
+The atonement, for instance, I never heard her mention, but
+Unitarianism was hateful to her, and Jesus was her God in every sense
+of the word.  On the other hand, she was partly Pagan, for she knew
+very little of that consideration for the feeble, and even for the
+foolish, which is the glory of Christianity.  She was rude to foolish
+people, and she instinctively kept out of the way of all disease and
+weakness, so that in this respect she was far below the commonplace
+tradesman's wife, who visited the sick, sat up with them, and, in
+fact, never seemed so completely in her element as when she could be
+with anybody who was ill in bed.
+
+Miss Leroy's father was republican, and so was my grandfather.  My
+grandfather and old Leroy were the only people in our town who
+refused to illuminate when a victory was gained over the French.
+Leroy's windows were spared on the ground that he was not a Briton,
+but the mob endeavoured to show my grandfather the folly of his
+belief in democracy by smashing every pane of glass in front of his
+house with stones.  This drew him and Leroy together, and the result
+was, that although Leroy himself never set foot inside any chapel or
+church, Miss Leroy was often induced to attend our meeting-house in
+company with a maiden aunt of mine, who rather "took to her."  Now
+comes the for ever mysterious passage in history.  There was amongst
+the attendants at that meeting-house a young man who was apprentice
+to a miller.  He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth,
+very good, but nothing more.  He wore on Sunday a complete suit of
+light pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salt
+on Sunday all his life.  He taught in the Sunday-school, and
+afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a
+prayer-meeting, and to "take the service" in the village chapels on
+Sunday evening.  He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered
+person I ever knew.  I first became acquainted with him when I was a
+child and he was past middle life.  What he was then, I am told, he
+always was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word
+escape his lips.  His habits, even when young, had a tendency to
+harden.  He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatest
+regularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after
+dark.  I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying
+with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the
+confusion of all who were around him.  He is dead now, but he lived
+to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and
+he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze.  He
+never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not
+at work or at chapel he slumbered.  To the utter amazement of
+everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he--
+George Butts--were to be married.  They were about the last people in
+the world, who, it was thought, could be brought together.  My mother
+was stunned, and never completely recovered.  I have seen her, forty
+years after George Butts' wedding-day, lift up her hands, and have
+heard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were of
+yesterday, "What made that girl have George I can NOT think--but
+there!"  What she meant by the last two words we could not
+comprehend.  Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean that
+she knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they were
+mistaken.  I am quite certain if she had known anything she must have
+told it, and, in the next place, the phrase "but there" was not
+uncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark the
+consciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give an
+explanation of mysterious phenomena in human relationships.  For my
+own part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother.  My father, who
+was a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle.
+He used to say that he never thought George could have "made up" to
+any young woman, and it was quite clear that Miss Leroy did not
+either then or afterwards display any violent affection for him.  I
+have heard her criticise and patronise him as a "good soul," but
+incapable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her.  After
+marriage she went her way and he his.  She got up early, as she was
+wont to do, and took her Bible into the fields while he was snoring.
+She would then very likely suffer from a terrible headache during the
+rest of the day, and lie down for hours, letting the house manage
+itself as best it could.  What made her selection of George more
+obscure was that she was much admired by many young fellows, some of
+whom were certainly more akin to her than he was; and I have heard
+from one or two reports of encouraging words, and even something more
+than words, which she had vouchsafed to them.  A solution is
+impossible.  The affinities, repulsions, reasons in a nature like
+that of Miss Leroy's are so secret and so subtle, working towards
+such incalculable and not-to-be-predicted results, that to attempt to
+make a major and minor premiss and an inevitable conclusion out of
+them would be useless.  One thing was clear, that by marrying George
+she gained great freedom.  If she had married anybody closer to her,
+she might have jarred with him; there might have been collision and
+wreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed; for she was
+not the kind of person to accommodate herself to others even in the
+matter of small differences.  But George's road through space lay
+entirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest chance of
+interference.  She was under the protection of a husband; she could
+do things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign land,
+she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small.
+This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give.  She went
+regularly all her life to chapel with George, but even when he became
+deacon, and "supplied" the villages round, she never would join the
+church as a member.  She never agreed with the minister, and he never
+could make anything out of her.  They did not quarrel, but she
+thought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed and
+uncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond to
+any dogmatic statement of the articles of religion, and who yet could
+not be put aside as "one of those in the gallery"--that is to say, as
+one of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns with
+amazing fervour, and she quoted them to him with a freedom and a
+certain superiority which he might have expected from an aged brother
+minister, but certainly not from one of his own congregation.  He was
+a preacher of the Gospel, it was true; and it was his duty, a duty on
+which he insisted, to be "instant in season and out of season" in
+saying spiritual things to his flock; but then they were things
+proper, decent, conventional, uttered with gravity at suitable times-
+-such as were customary amongst all the ministers of the
+denomination.  It was not pleasant to be outbid in his own
+department, especially by one who was not a communicant, and to be
+obliged, when he went on a pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs.
+Butts happened to be, to sit still and hear her, regardless of the
+minister's presence, conclude a short mystical monologue with
+Cowper's verse -
+
+
+"Exults our rising soul,
+   Disburdened of her load,
+And swells unutterably full
+   Of glory and of God."
+
+
+This was NOT pleasant to our minister, nor was it pleasant to the
+minister's wife.  But George Butts held a responsible position in our
+community, and the minister's wife held also a responsible position,
+so that she taxed all her ingenuity to let her friends understand at
+tea-parties what she thought of Mrs. Butts without saying anything
+which could be the ground of formal remonstrance.  Thus did Mrs.
+Butts live among us, as an Arabian bird with its peculiar habits,
+cries, and plumage might live in one of our barn-yards with the
+ordinary barn-door fowls.
+
+I was never happier when I was a boy than when I was with Mrs. Butts
+at the mill, which George had inherited.  There was a grand freedom
+in her house.  The front door leading into the garden was always
+open.  There was no precise separation between the house and the
+mill.  The business and the dwelling-place were mixed up together,
+and covered with flour.  Mr. Butts was in the habit of walking out of
+his mill into the living-room every now and then, and never dreamed
+when one o'clock came that it was necessary for him to change his
+floury coat before he had his dinner.  His cap he also often
+retained, and in any weather, not extraordinarily cold, he sat in his
+shirtsleeves.  The garden was large and half-wild.  A man from the
+mill, if work was slack, gave a day to it now and then, but it was
+not trimmed and raked and combed like the other gardens in the town.
+It was full of gooseberry trees, and I was permitted to eat the
+gooseberries without stint.  The mill-life, too, was inexpressibly
+attractive--the dark chamber with the great, green, dripping wheel in
+it, so awfully mysterious as the central life of the whole structure;
+the machinery connected with the wheel--I knew not how; the hole
+where the roach lay by the side of the mill-tail in the eddy; the
+haunts of the water-rats which we used to hunt with Spot, the black
+and tan terrier, and the still more exciting sport with the ferrets--
+all this drew me down the lane perpetually.  I liked, and even loved
+Mrs. Butts, too, for her own sake.  Her kindness to me was unlimited,
+and she was never overcome with the fear of "spoiling me," which
+seemed the constant dread of most of my hostesses.  I never lost my
+love for her.  It grew as I grew, despite my mother's scarcely
+suppressed hostility to her, and when I heard she was ill, and was
+likely to die, I went to be with her.  She was eighty years old then.
+I sat by her bedside with her hand in mine.  I was there when she
+passed away, and--but I have no mind and no power to say any more,
+for all the memories of her affection and of the sunny days by the
+water come over me and prevent the calmness necessary for a
+chronicle.  She with all her faults and eccentricities will always
+have in my heart a little chapel with an ever-burning light.  She was
+one of the very very few whom I have ever seen who knew how to love a
+child.
+
+Mrs. Butts and George had one son who was named Clement.  He was
+exactly my own age, and naturally we were constant companions.  We
+went to the same school.  He never distinguished himself at his
+books, but he was chief among us.  He had a versatile talent for
+almost every accomplishment in which we delighted, but he was not
+supreme in any one of them.  There were better cricketers, better
+football players, better hands at setting a night-line, better
+swimmers than Clem, but he could do something, and do it well, in all
+these departments.  He generally took up a thing with much eagerness
+for a time, and then let it drop.  He was foremost in introducing new
+games and new fashions, which he permitted to flourish for a time,
+and then superseded.  As he grew up he displayed a taste for drawing
+and music.  He was soon able to copy little paintings of flowers, or
+even little country scenes, and to play a piece of no very great
+difficulty with tolerable effect.  But as he never was taught by a
+master, and never practised elementary exercises and studies, he was
+deficient in accuracy.  When the question came what was to be done
+with him after he left school, his father naturally wished him to go
+into the mill.  Clem, however, set his face steadily against this
+project, and his mother, who was a believer in his genius, supported
+him.  He actually wanted to go to the University, a thing unheard of
+in those days amongst our people; but this was not possible, and
+after dangling about for some time at home, he obtained the post of
+usher in a school, an occupation which he considered more congenial
+and intellectual than that of grinding flour.  Strange to say,
+although he knew less than any of his colleagues, he succeeded better
+than any of them.  He managed to impress a sense of his own
+importance upon everybody, including the headmaster.  He slid into a
+position of superiority. above three or four colleagues who would
+have shamed him at an examination, and who uttered many a curse
+because they saw themselves surpassed and put in the shade by a
+stranger, who, they were confident, could hardly construct a
+hexameter.  He never quarrelled with them nor did he grossly
+patronise them, but he always let them know that he considered
+himself above them.  His reading was desultory; in fact, everything
+he did was desultory.  He was not selfish in the ordinary sense of
+the word.  Rather was he distinguished by a large and liberal open-
+handedness; but he was liberal also to himself to a remarkable
+degree, dressing himself expensively, and spending a good deal of
+money in luxuries.  He was specially fond of insisting on his half
+French origin, made a great deal of his mother, was silent as to his
+father, and always signed himself C. Leroy Butts, although I don't
+believe the second Christian name was given him in baptism.
+Notwithstanding his generosity he was egotistical and hollow at
+heart.  He knew nothing of friendship in the best sense of the word,
+but had a multitude of acquaintances, whom he invariably sought
+amongst those who were better off than himself.  He was popular with
+them, for no man knew better than he how to get up an entertainment,
+or to make a success of an evening party.  He had not been at his
+school for two years before he conceived the notion of setting up for
+himself.  He had not a penny, but he borrowed easily what was wanted
+from somebody he knew, and in a twelvemonth more he had a dozen
+pupils.  He took care to get the ablest subordinates he could find,
+and he succeeded in passing a boy for an open scholarship at Oxford,
+against two competitors prepared by the very man whom he had formerly
+served.  After this he prospered greatly, and would have prospered
+still more, if his love of show and extravagance had not increased
+with his income.  His talents were sometimes taxed when people who
+came to place their sons with him supposed ignorantly that his origin
+and attainments were what might be expected from his position; and
+poor Chalmers, a Glasgow M.A., who still taught, for 80 pounds a
+year, the third class in the establishment in which Butts began life,
+had some bitter stories on that subject.  Chalmers was a perfect
+scholar, but he was not agreeable.  He had black finger-nails, and
+wore dirty collars.  Having a lively remembrance of his friend's
+"general acquaintance" with Latin prosody, Chalmers' opinion of
+Providence was much modified when he discovered what Providence was
+doing for Butts.  Clem took to the Church when he started for
+himself.  It would have been madness in him to remain a Dissenter.
+But in private, if it suited his purpose, he could always be airily
+sceptical, and he had a superficial acquaintance, second-hand, with a
+multitude of books, many of them of an infidel turn.  I once rebuked
+him for his hypocrisy, and his defence was that religious disputes
+were indifferent to him, and that at any rate a man associates with
+gentlemen if he is a churchman.  Cultivation and manners he thought
+to be of more importance than Calvinism.  I believe that he partly
+meant what he said.  He went to church because the school would have
+failed if he had gone to chapel; but he was sufficiently keen-sighted
+and clever to be beyond the petty quarrels of the sects, and a song
+well sung was of much greater moment to him than an essay on paedo-
+baptism.  It was all very well of Chalmers to revile him for his
+shallowness.  He was shallow, and yet he possessed in some mysterious
+way a talent which I greatly coveted, and which in this world is
+inestimably precious--the talent of making people give way before
+him--a capacity of self-impression.  Chalmers could never have
+commanded anybody.  He had no power whatever, even when he was right,
+to put his will against the wills of others, but yielded first this
+way and then the other.  Clem, on the contrary, without any
+difficulty or any effort, could conquer all opposition, and smilingly
+force everybody to do his bidding.
+
+Clem had a peculiar theory with regard to his own rights and those of
+the class to which he considered that he belonged.  He always held
+implicitly and sometimes explicitly that gifted people live under a
+kind of dispensation of grace; the law existing solely for dull
+souls.  What in a clown is a crime punishable by the laws of the land
+might in a man of genius be a necessary development, or at any rate
+an excusable offence.  He had nothing to say for the servant-girl who
+had sinned with the shopman, but if artist or poet were to carry off
+another man's wife, it might not be wrong.
+
+He believed, and acted upon the belief, that the inferior ought to
+render perpetual incense to the superior, and that the superior
+should receive it as a matter of course.  When his father was ill he
+never waited on him or sat up a single night with him.  If duty was
+disagreeable to him Clem paid homage to it afar off, but pleaded
+exemption.  He admitted that waiting on the sick is obligatory on
+people who are fitted for it, and is very charming.  Nothing was more
+beautiful to him than tender, filial care spending itself for a
+beloved object.  But it was not his vocation.  His nerves were more
+finely ordered than those of mankind generally, and the sight of
+disease and suffering distressed him too much.  Everything was
+surrendered to him in the houses of his friends.  If any
+inconvenience was to be endured, he was the first person to be
+protected from it, and he accepted the greatest sacrifices, with a
+graceful acknowledgment, it is true, but with no repulse.  To what
+better purpose could the best wine be put than in cherishing his
+imagination.  It was simple waste to allow it to be poured out upon
+the earth, and to give it to a fool was no better.  After he
+succeeded so well in the world, Clem, to a great extent, deserted me,
+although I was his oldest friend and the friend of his childhood.  I
+heard that he visited a good many rich persons, that he made much of
+them, and they made much of him.  He kept up a kind of acquaintance
+with me, not by writing to me, but by the very cheap mode of sending
+me a newspaper now and then with a marked paragraph in it announcing
+the exploits of his school at a cricket-match, or occasionally with a
+report of a lecture which he had delivered.  He was a decent orator,
+and from motives of business if from no other, he not unfrequently
+spoke in public.  One or two of these lectures wounded me a good
+deal.  There was one in particular on As You Like It, in which he
+held up to admiration the fidelity which is so remarkable in
+Shakespeare, and lamented that in these days it was so rare to find
+anything of the kind, he thought that we were becoming more
+indifferent to one another.  He maintained, however, that man should
+be everything to man, and he then enlarged on the duty of really
+cultivating affection, of its superiority to books, and on the
+pleasure and profit of self-denial.  I do not mean to accuse Clem of
+downright hypocrisy.  I have known many persons come up from the
+country and go into raptures over a playhouse sun and moon who have
+never bestowed a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to be
+seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means
+follows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of
+unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we
+can step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the
+unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left a
+widow in the little villa there.  I was annoyed with myself because
+Clem's abandonment of me so much affected me.  I wished I could cut
+the rope and carelessly cast him adrift as he had cast me adrift, but
+I could not.  I never could make out and cannot make out what was the
+secret of his influence over me; why I was unable to say, "If you do
+not care for me I do not care for you."  I longed sometimes for
+complete rupture, so that we might know exactly where we were, but it
+never came.  Gradually our intercourse grew thinner and thinner,
+until at last I heard that he had been spending a fortnight with some
+semi-aristocratic acquaintance within five miles of me, and during
+the whole of that time he never came near me.  I met him in a railway
+station soon afterwards, when he came up to me effusive and
+apparently affectionate.  "It was a real grief to me, my dear
+fellow," he said, "that I could not call on you last month, but the
+truth was I was so driven:  they would make me go here and go there,
+and I kept putting off my visit to you till it was too late."
+Fortunately my train was just starting, or I don't know what might
+have happened.  I said not a word; shook hands with him; got into the
+carriage; he waved his hat to me, and I pretended not to see him, but
+I did see him, and saw him turn round immediately to some well-
+dressed officer-like gentleman with whom he walked laughing down the
+platform.  The rest of that day was black to me.  I cared for
+nothing.  I passed away from the thought of Clem, and dwelt upon the
+conviction which had long possessed me that I was INSIGNIFICANT, that
+there was NOTHING MUCH IN ME, and it was this which destroyed my
+peace.  We may reconcile ourselves to poverty and suffering, but few
+of us can endure the conviction that there is NOTHING IN US, and that
+consequently we cannot expect anybody to gravitate towards us with
+any forceful impulse.  It is a bitter experience.  And yet there is
+consolation.  The universe is infinite.  In the presence of its
+celestial magnitudes who is there who is really great or small, and
+what is the difference between you and me, my work and yours?  I
+sought refuge in the idea of GOD, the God of a starry night with its
+incomprehensible distances; and I was at peace, content to be the
+meanest worm of all the millions that crawl on the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT
+
+
+
+The few friends who have read the first part of my autobiography may
+perhaps remember that in my younger days I had engaged myself to a
+girl named Ellen, from whom afterwards I parted.  After some two or
+three years she was left an orphan, and came into the possession of a
+small property, over which unfortunately she had complete power.  She
+was attractive and well-educated, and I heard long after I had broken
+with her, and had ceased to have intercourse with Butts, that the two
+were married.  He of course, living so near her, had known her well,
+and he found her money useful.  How they agreed I knew not save by
+report, but I was told that after the first child was born, the only
+child they ever had, Butts grew indifferent to her, and that she, to
+use my friend's expression, "went off," by which I suppose he meant
+that she faded.  There happened in those days to live near Butts a
+small squire, married, but with no family.  He was a lethargic
+creature, about five-and-thirty years old, farming eight hundred
+acres of his own land.  He did not, however, belong to the farming
+class.  He had been to Harrow, was on the magistrates' bench, and
+associated with the small aristocracy of the country round.  He was
+like every other squire whom I remember in my native county, and I
+can remember scores of them.  He read no books and tolerated the
+usual conventional breaches of the moral law, but was an intense
+worshipper of respectability, and hated a scandal.  On one point he
+differed from his neighbours.  He was a Whig and they were all
+Tories.  I have said he read no books, and this, on the whole, is
+true, but nevertheless he did know something about the history of the
+early part of the century, and he was rather fond at political
+gatherings of making some allusion to Mr. Fox.  His father had sat in
+the House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the
+French war.  I don't suppose that anybody not actually IN IT--no
+Londoner certainly--can understand the rigidity of the bonds which
+restricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know may
+restrict it now.  There was with us one huge and dark exception to
+the general uniformity.  The earl had broken loose, had ruined his
+estate, had defied decorum and openly lived with strange women at
+home and in Paris, but this black background did but set off the
+otherwise universal adhesion to the Church and to authorised manners,
+an adhesion tempered and rendered tolerable by port wine.  It must
+not, however, be supposed that human nature was different from the
+human nature of to-day or a thousand years ago.  There were then,
+even as there were a thousand years ago, and are to-day, small,
+secret doors, connected with mysterious staircases, by which access
+was gained to freedom; and men and women, inmates of castles with
+walls a yard thick, and impenetrable portcullises, sought those doors
+and descended those stairs night and day.  But nobody knew, or if we
+did know, the silence was profound.  The broad-shouldered, yellow-
+haired Whig squire, had a wife who was the opposite of him.  She came
+from a distant part of the country, and had been educated in France.
+She was small, with black hair, and yet with blue eyes.  She spoke
+French perfectly, was devoted to music, read French books, and,
+although she was a constant attendant at church, and gave no
+opportunity whatever for the slightest suspicion, the matrons of the
+circle in which she moved were never quite happy about her.  This was
+due partly to her knowledge of French, and partly to her having no
+children.  Anything more about her I do not know.  She was beyond us,
+and although I have seen her often enough I never spoke to her.
+Butts, however, managed to become a visitor at the squire's house.
+Fancy MY going to the squire's!  But Butts did, was accepted there,
+and even dined there with a parson, and two or three half-pay
+officers.  The squire never called on Butts.  That was an understood
+thing, nor did Mrs. Butts accompany her husband.  That also was an
+understood thing.  It was strange that Butts could tolerate and even
+court such a relationship.  Most men would scorn with the scorn of a
+personal insult an invitation to a house from which their wives were
+expressly excluded.  The squire's lady and Clem became great friends.
+She discovered that his mother was a Frenchwoman, and this was a bond
+between them.  She discovered also that Clem was artistic, that he
+was devotedly fond of music, that he could draw a little, paint a
+little, and she believed in the divine right of talent wherever it
+might be found to assert a claim of equality with those who were
+better born.  The women in the country-side were shy of her; for the
+men she could not possibly care, and no doubt she must at times have
+got rather weary of her heavy husband with his one outlook towards
+the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy
+of 1802.  I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my
+story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at
+second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them
+from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be
+mistaken on any essential point.  I imagine that by this time Mrs.
+Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years.  She
+had grown older since she and I had parted; she had seen trouble; her
+child had been born, and although she was not exactly estranged from
+Clem, for neither he nor she would have admitted any coolness, she
+had learned that she was nothing specially to him.  I have often
+noticed what an imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in the
+balance of opposing forces, will alter the character.  I have
+observed a woman, for example, essentially the same at twenty and
+thirty--who is there who is not always essentially the same?--and
+yet, what was a defect at twenty, has become transformed and
+transfigured into a benignant virtue at thirty; translating the whole
+nature from the human to the divine.  Some slight depression has been
+wrought here, and some slight lift has been given there, and beauty
+and order have miraculously emerged from what was chaotic.  The same
+thing may continually be noticed in the hereditary transmission of
+qualities.  The redeeming virtue of the father palpably present in
+the son becomes his curse, through a faint diminution of the strength
+of the check which caused that virtue to be the father's salvation.
+The propensity, too, which is a man's evil genius, and leads him to
+madness and utter ruin, gives vivid reality to all his words and
+thoughts, and becomes all his strength, if by divine assistance it
+can just be subdued and prevented from rising in victorious
+insurrection.  But this is a digression, useful, however, in its way,
+because it will explain Mrs. Butts when we come a little nearer to
+her in the future.
+
+For a time Clem's visits to the squire's house always took place when
+the squire was at home, but an amateur concert was to be arranged in
+which Clem was to take part together with the squire's lady.  Clem
+consequently was obliged to go to the Hall for the purpose of
+practising, and so it came to pass that he was there at unusual hours
+and when the master was afield.  These morning and afternoon calls
+did not cease when the concert was over.  Clem's wife did not know
+anything about them, and, if she noticed his frequent absence, she
+was met with an excuse.  Perhaps the worst, or almost the worst
+effect of relationships which we do not like to acknowledge, is the
+secrecy and equivocation which they beget.  From the very first
+moment when the intimacy between the squire's wife and Clem began to
+be anything more than harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and to
+become contemptible.  At the same time I believe he defended himself
+against himself with the weapons which were ever ready when self rose
+against self because of some wrong-doing.  He was not as other men.
+It was absurd to class what he did with what an ordinary person might
+do, although externally his actions and those of the ordinary person
+might resemble one another.  I cannot trace the steps by which the
+two sinners drew nearer and nearer together, for the simple reason
+that this is an autobiography, and not a novel.  I do not know what
+the development was, nor did anybody except the person concerned.
+Neither do I know what was the mental history of Mrs. Butts during
+this unhappy period.  She seldom talked about it afterwards.  I do,
+however, happen to recollect hearing her once say that her greatest
+trouble was the cessation, from some unknown cause, of Clem's
+attempts--they were never many--to interest and amuse her.  It is
+easy to understand how this should be.  If a man is guilty of any
+defection from himself, of anything of which he is ashamed,
+everything which is better becomes a farce to him.  After he has been
+betrayed by some passion, how can he pretend to the perfect enjoyment
+of what is pure?  The moment he feels any disposition to rise, he is
+stricken through as if with an arrow, and he drops.  Not until weeks,
+months, and even years have elapsed, does he feel justified in
+surrendering himself to a noble emotion.  I have heard of persons who
+have been able to ascend easily and instantaneously from the mud to
+the upper air, and descend as easily; but to me at least they are
+incomprehensible.  Clem, less than most men, suffered permanently, or
+indeed in any way from remorse, because he was so shielded by his
+peculiar philosophy; but I can quite believe that when he got into
+the habit of calling at the Hall at mid-day, his behaviour to his
+wife changed.
+
+One day in December the squire had gone out with the hounds.  Clem,
+going on from bad to worse, had now reached the point of planning to
+be at the Hall when the squire was not at home.  On that particular
+afternoon Clem was there.  It was about half-past four o'clock, and
+the master was not expected till six.  There had been some music, the
+lady accompanying, and Clem singing.  It was over, and Clem, sitting
+down beside her at the piano, and pointing out with his right hand
+some passage which had troubled him, had placed his left arm on her
+shoulder, and round her neck, she not resisting.  He always swore
+afterwards that never till then had such a familiarity as this been
+permitted, and I believe that he did not tell a lie.  But what was
+there in that familiarity?  The worst was already there, and it was
+through a mere accident that it never showed itself.  The accident
+was this.  The squire, for some unknown reason, had returned earlier
+than usual, and dismounting in the stable-yard, had walked round the
+garden on the turf which came close to the windows of the ground
+floor.  Passing the drawing-room window, and looking in by the edge
+of the drawn-down blind, he saw his wife and Clem just at the moment
+described.  He slipped round to the door, took off his boots so that
+he might not be heard, and as there was a large screen inside the
+room he was able to enter it unobserved.  Clem caught sight of him
+just as he emerged from behind the screen, and started up instantly
+in great confusion, the lady, with greater presence of mind,
+remaining perfectly still.  Without a word the squire strode up to
+Clem, struck out at him, caught him just over the temple, and felled
+him instantaneously.  He lay for some time senseless, and what passed
+between husband and wife I cannot say.  After about ten minutes,
+perhaps, Clem came to himself; there was nobody to be seen; and he
+managed to get up and crawl home.  He told his wife he had met with
+an accident; that he would go to bed, and that she should know all
+about it when he was better.  His forehead was dressed, and to bed he
+went.  That night Mrs. Butts had a letter.  It ran as follows:-
+
+
+"MADAM,--It may at first sight seem a harsh thing for me to write and
+tell you what I have to say, but I can assure you I do not mean to be
+anything but kind to you, and I think it will be better, for reasons
+which I will afterwards explain, that I should communicate with you
+rather than with your husband.  For some time past I have suspected
+that he was too fond of my wife, and last night I caught him with his
+arms round her neck.  In a moment of not unjustifiable anger I
+knocked him down.  I have not the honour of knowing you personally,
+but from what I have heard of you I am sure that he has not the
+slightest reason for playing with other women.  A man who will do
+what he has done will be very likely to conceal from you the true
+cause of his disaster, and if you know the cause you may perhaps be
+able to reclaim him.  If he has any sense of honour left in him, and
+of what is due to you, he will seek your pardon for his baseness, and
+you will have a hold on him afterwards which you would not have if
+you were in ignorance of what has happened.  For him I do not care a
+straw, but for you I feel deeply, and I believe that my frankness
+with you, although it may cause you much suffering now, will save you
+more hereafter.  I have only one condition to make.  Mr. Butts must
+leave this place, and never let me see his face again.  He has ruined
+my peace.  Nothing will be published through me, for, as far as I can
+prevent it, I will have no public exposure.  If Mr. Butts were to
+remain here it would be dangerous for us to meet, and probably
+everything, by some chance, would become common property.--Believe me
+to be, Madam, with many assurances of respect, truly yours,--."
+
+
+I cannot distinguish the precise proportion of cruelty in this
+letter.  Did the writer designedly torture Butts by telling his wife,
+or did he really think that she would in the end be happier because
+Butts would not have a secret reserved from her,--a temptation to
+lying--and because with this secret in her possession, he might
+perhaps be restrained in future?  Nobody knows.  All we know is that
+there are very few human actions of which it can be said that this or
+that taken by itself produced them.  With our inborn tendency to
+abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not
+exist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which are
+too simple, and which, in fact, have no being in rerum natura.
+Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone.
+There is no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician.  I
+see no reason why even motives diametrically opposite should not
+unite in one resulting deed, and think it very probable that the
+squire was both cruel and merciful to the same person in the letter;
+influenced by exactly conflicting passions, whose conflict ended SO.
+
+As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before.  I
+do not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybody
+ever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long while
+afterwards.  Clem, however, packed up and left the town, after
+selling his business.  He had a reputation for restlessness; and his
+departure, although it was sudden, was no surprise.  He betook
+himself to Australia, his wife going with him.  I heard that they had
+gone, and heard also that he was tired of school-keeping in England,
+and had determined to try his fortune in another part of the world.
+Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about
+him.  Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband.
+I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had
+accepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through
+her lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her duty
+more and more to draw him to herself.  She had a divine disposition,
+not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any
+wrong which was done to her.  That almost instinctive tendency in
+men, to excuse, to transfer blame to others, to be angry with
+somebody else when they suffer from the consequences of their own
+misdeeds, in her did not exist.
+
+During almost the whole of her married life, before this affair
+between the squire and Clem, Mrs. Butts had had much trouble,
+although her trouble was, perhaps, rather the absence of joy than the
+presence of any poignant grief.  She was much by herself.  She had
+never been a great reader, but in her frequent solitude she was
+forced to do something in order to obtain relief, and she naturally
+turned to the Bible.  It would be foolish to say that the Bible alone
+was to be credited with the support she received.  It may only have
+been the occasion for a revelation of the strength that was in her.
+Reading, however, under such circumstances, is likely to be
+peculiarly profitable.  It is never so profitable as when it is
+undertaken in order that a positive need may be satisfied or an
+inquiry answered.  She discovered in the Bible much that persons to
+whom it is a mere literature would never find.  The water of life was
+not merely admirable to the eye; she drank it, and knew what a
+property it possessed for quenching thirst.  No doubt the thought of
+a heaven hereafter was especially consolatory.  She was able to
+endure, and even to be happy because the vision of lengthening sorrow
+was bounded by a better world beyond.  "A very poor, barbarous
+gospel," thinks the philosopher who rests on his Marcus Antoninus and
+Epictetus.  I do not mean to say, that in the shape in which she
+believed this doctrine, it was not poor and barbarous, but yet we all
+of us, whatever our creed may be, must lay hold at times for
+salvation upon something like it.  Those who have been plunged up to
+the very lips in affliction know its necessity.  To such as these it
+is idle work for the prosperous and the comfortable to preach
+satisfaction with the life that now is.  There are seasons when it is
+our sole resource to recollect that in a few short years we shall be
+at rest.  While upon this subject I may say, too, that some injustice
+has been done to the Christian creed of immortality as an influence
+in determining men's conduct.  Paul preached the imminent advent of
+Christ and besought his disciples, therefore, to watch, and we ask
+ourselves what is the moral value to us of such an admonition.  But
+surely if we are to have any reasons for being virtuous, this is as
+good as any other.  It is just as respectable to believe that we
+ought to abstain from iniquity because Christ is at hand, and we
+expect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by our abstention
+we shall be healthier or more prosperous.  Paul had a dream--an
+absurd dream let us call it--of an immediate millennium, and of the
+return of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judging
+mankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil.  It was a
+baseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous.  It is
+anything but that, it is the very opposite of that.  Putting aside
+its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy of
+all noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in the present
+condition of things.
+
+Going back to Clem's wife; she laid hold, as I have said, upon
+heaven.  The thought wrought in her something more than forgetfulness
+of pain or the expectation of counterpoising bliss.  We can
+understand what this something was, for although we know no such
+heaven as hers, a new temper is imparted to us, a new spirit breathed
+into us; I was about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when we
+consider that we live surrounded by the soundless depths in which the
+stars repose.  Such a consideration has a direct practical effect
+upon us, and so had the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts.  "Why
+dost thou judge thy brother," says Paul, "for we shall all stand
+before the judgment-seat of God."  Paul does not mean that God will
+punish him and that we may rest satisfied that our enemy will be
+turned into hell fire.  Rather does he mean, what we, too, feel,
+that, reflecting on the great idea of God, and upon all that it
+involves, our animosities are softened, and our heat against our
+brother is cooled.
+
+One or two reflections may perhaps be permitted here on this passage
+in Mrs. Butts' history.
+
+The fidelity of Clem's wife to him, if not entirely due to the New
+Testament, was in a great measure traceable to it.  She had learned
+from the Epistle to the Corinthians that charity beareth all things,
+believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; and she
+interpreted this to mean, not merely charity to those whom she loved
+by nature, but charity to those with whom she was not in sympathy,
+and who even wronged her.  Christianity no doubt does teach such a
+charity as this, a love which is to be:  independent of mere personal
+likes and dislikes, a love of the human in man.  The natural man, the
+man of this century, uncontrolled by Christianity, considers himself
+a model of what is virtuous and heroic if he really loves his
+friends, and he permits all kinds of savage antipathies to those of
+his fellow creatures with whom he is not in harmony.  Jesus on the
+other hand asks with His usual perfect simplicity, "If ye love them
+which love you, what reward have ye?  Do not even the publicans the
+same?"  It would be a great step in advance for most of us to love
+anybody, and the publicans of the time of Jesus must have been a much
+more Christian set than most Christians of the present day; but that
+we should love those who do not love us is a height never scaled now,
+except by a few of the elect in whom Christ still survives.  In the
+gospel of Luke, also, Mrs. Butts read that she was to hope for
+nothing again from her love, and that she was to be merciful, as her
+Father in heaven is merciful.  That is really the expression of the
+IDEA in morality, and incalculable is the blessing that our great
+religious teacher should have been bold enough to teach the idea, and
+not any limitation of it.  He always taught it, the inward born, the
+heavenly law towards which everything strives.  He always trusted it;
+He did not deal in exceptions; He relied on it to the uttermost,
+never despairing.  This has always seemed to me to be the real
+meaning of the word faith.  It is permanent confidence in the idea, a
+confidence never to be broken down by apparent failure, or by
+examples by which ordinary people prove that qualification is
+necessary.  It was precisely because Jesus taught the idea, and
+nothing below it, that He had such authority over a soul like my
+friend's, and the effect produced by Him could not have been produced
+by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity.
+
+It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had a
+powerful influence in enabling men and women to endure, although I
+object to giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a
+necessity in all ages.  "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
+and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."
+This is the last word which can be said.  Nothing can go beyond it,
+and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake under
+our feet.  All life is summed up, and due account is taken of it,
+according to its degree.  Mrs. Butts' Calvinism, however, hardly took
+the usual dogmatic form.  She was too simple to penetrate the depths
+of metaphysical theology, and she never would have dared to set down
+any of her fellow creatures as irrevocably lost.  She adapted the
+Calvinistic creed to something which suited her.  For example, she
+fully understood what St. Paul means when he tells the Thessalonians
+that BECAUSE they were called, THEREFORE they were to stand fast.
+She thought with Paul that being called; having a duty plainly laid
+upon her; being bidden as if by a general to do something, she OUGHT
+to stand fast; and she stood fast, supported against all pressure by
+the consciousness of fulfilling the special orders of One who was her
+superior.  There is no doubt that this dogma of a personal calling is
+a great consolation, and it is a great truth.  Looking at the masses
+of humanity, driven this way and that way, the Christian teaching is
+apt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocation
+as real as if that soul were alone upon the planet.  Yet it is a
+fact.  We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of the
+impotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall
+take care of every atom of life on the globe:  we are compelled to
+think that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individuals
+must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness.
+But the truth of truths is that the mind of the universe is not our
+mind, or at any rate controlled by our limitations.
+
+This has been a long digression which I did not intend; but I could
+not help it.  I was anxious to show how Mrs. Butts met her trouble
+through her religion.  The apostle says that "they drank of that
+spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ."  That
+was true of her.  The way through the desert was not annihilated; the
+path remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was accompanied to
+the end by a sweet stream to which she could turn aside, and from
+which she could obtain refreshment and strength.
+
+Just about the time that we began our meetings near Drury Lane, I
+heard that Clem was dead; that he had died abroad.  I knew nothing
+more; I thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, but I had
+parted from both long ago, and I went on with my work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--WHAT IT ALL CAME TO
+
+
+
+For two years or thereabouts, M'Kay and myself continued our labours
+in the Drury Lane neighbourhood.  There is a proverb that it is the
+first step which is the most difficult in the achievement of any
+object, and the proverb has been altered by ascribing the main part
+of the difficulty to the last step.  Neither the first nor the last
+has been the difficult step with me, but rather what lies between.
+The first is usually helped by the excitement and the promise of new
+beginnings, and the last by the prospect of triumph; but the
+intermediate path is unassisted by enthusiasm, and it is here we are
+so likely to faint.  M'Kay nevertheless persevered, supporting me,
+who otherwise might have been tempted to despair, and at the end of
+the two years we were still at our posts.  We had, however, learned
+something.  We had learned that we could not make the slightest
+impression on Drury Lane proper.  Now and then an idler, or sometimes
+a dozen, lounged in, but what was said was strange to them; they were
+out of their own world as completely as if they were in another
+planet, and all our efforts to reach them by simplicity of statement
+and by talking about things which we supposed would interest them
+utterly failed.  I did not know, till I came in actual contact with
+them, how far away the classes which lie at the bottom of great
+cities are from those above them; how completely they are
+inaccessible to motives which act upon ordinary human beings, and how
+deeply they are sunk beyond ray of sun or stars, immersed in the
+selfishness naturally begotten of their incessant struggle for
+existence and the incessant warfare with society.  It was an awful
+thought to me, ever present on those Sundays, and haunting me at
+other times, that men, women, and children were living in such
+brutish degradation, and that as they died others would take their
+place.  Our civilisation seemed nothing but a thin film or crust
+lying over a volcanic pit, and I often wondered whether some day the
+pit would not break up through it and destroy us all.  Great towns
+are answerable for the creation and maintenance of the masses of
+dark, impenetrable, subterranean blackguardism, with which we became
+acquainted.  The filthy gloom of the sky, the dirt of the street, the
+absence of fresh air, the herding of the poor into huge districts
+which cannot be opened up by those who would do good, are tremendous
+agencies of corruption which are active at such a rate that it is
+appalling to reflect what our future will be if the accumulation of
+population be not checked.  To stand face to face with the insoluble
+is not pleasant.  A man will do anything rather than confess it is
+beyond him.  He will create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possible
+escape here and there, but this problem of Drury Lane was round and
+hard like a ball of adamant.  The only thing I could do was faintly,
+and I was about to say stupidly, hope--for I had no rational,
+tangible grounds for hoping--that some force of which we are not now
+aware might some day develop itself which will be able to resist and
+remove the pressure which sweeps and crushes into a hell, sealed from
+the upper air, millions of human souls every year in one quarter of
+the globe alone.
+
+M'Kay's dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would be a
+mistake to say that they ended in nothing.  It often happens that a
+grand attempt, although it may fail--miserably fail--is fruitful in
+the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, but
+one which would never have been attained without it.  A youth strives
+after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he has
+never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter
+for the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred yards
+away will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his arm
+for fifty yards.  So it was with M'Kay.  He did not convert Drury
+Lane, but he saved two or three.  One man whom we came to know was a
+labourer in Somerset House, a kind of coal porter employed in
+carrying coals into the offices there from the cellars below, and in
+other menial duties.  He had about fifteen or sixteen shillings a
+week, and as the coals must necessarily be in the different rooms
+before ten o'clock in the morning, he began work early, and was
+obliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand.  This man had
+originally been a small tradesman in a country town.  He was honest,
+but he never could or never would push his trade in any way.  He was
+fond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings, disliked his
+shop, and ought to have been a carpenter or cabinet-maker--not as a
+master but as a journeyman, for he had no ability whatever to control
+men or direct large operations.  He was married, and a sense of duty
+to his wife--he fortunately had no children--induced him to stand or
+sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come to
+buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as any
+favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced by
+his more energetic or more obsequious rivals.  In the end he was
+obliged to put up his shutters.  Unhappily for him, he had never been
+a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in
+the town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him.  Not
+being master of any craft, he was in a pitiable plight, and was
+slowly sinking, when he applied to the solicitor of the political
+party for which he had always voted to assist him.  The solicitor
+applied to the member, and the member, much regretting the difficulty
+of obtaining places for grown-up men, and explaining the pressure
+upon the Treasury, wrote to say that the only post at his disposal
+was that of labourer.  He would have liked to offer a messengership,
+but the Treasury had hundreds of applications from great people who
+wished to dispose of favourite footmen whose services they no longer
+required.  Our friend Taylor had by this time been brought very low,
+or he would have held out for something better, but there was nothing
+to be done.  He was starving, and he therefore accepted; came to
+London; got a room, one room only, near Clare Market, and began his
+new duties.  He was able to pick up a shilling or two more weekly by
+going on errands for the clerks during his slack time in the day, so
+that altogether on the average he made up about eighteen shillings.
+Wandering about the Clare Market region on Sunday he found us out,
+came in, and remained constant.  Naturally, as we had so few
+adherents, we gradually knew these few very intimately, and Taylor
+would often spend a holiday or part of the Sunday with us.  He was
+not eminent for anything in particular, and an educated man,
+selecting as his friends those only who stand for something, would
+not have taken the slightest notice of him.  He had read nothing
+particular, and thought nothing particular--he was indeed one of the
+masses--but in this respect different, that he had not the tendency
+to association, aggregation, or clanship which belong to the masses
+generally.  He was different, of course, in all his ways from his
+neighbours born and bred to Clare Market and its alleys.  Although
+commonplace, he had demands made upon him for an endurance by no
+means commonplace, and he had sorrows which were as exquisite as
+those of his betters.  He did not much resent his poverty.  To that I
+think he would have submitted, and in fact he did submit to it
+cheerfully.  What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him at
+the office.  He was a servant of servants.  The messengers, who
+themselves were exposed to all the petty tyrannies of the clerks, and
+dared not reply, were Taylor's masters, and sought a compensation for
+their own serfdom by making his ten times worse.  The head messenger,
+who had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor had "answered" he
+would have been reported.  He had never been a person of much
+importance, but at least he had been independent, and it was a new
+experience for him to feel that he was a thing fit for nothing but to
+be cuffed and cursed.  Upon this point he used to get eloquent--as
+eloquent as he could be, for he had small power of expression, and he
+would describe to me the despair which came over him down in those
+dark vaults at the prospect of life continuing after this fashion,
+and with not the minutest gleam of light even at the very end.
+Nobody ever cared to know the most ordinary facts about him.  Nobody
+inquired whether he was married or single; nobody troubled himself
+when he was ill.  If he was away, his pay was stopped; and when he
+returned to work nobody asked if he was better.  Who can wonder that
+at first, when he was an utter stranger in a strange land, he was
+overcome by the situation, and that the world was to him a dungeon
+worse than that of Chillon?  Who can wonder that he was becoming
+reckless?  A little more of such a life would have transformed him
+into a brute.  He had not the ability to become revolutionary, or it
+would have made him a conspirator.  Suffering of any kind is hard to
+bear, but the suffering which especially damages character is that
+which is caused by the neglect or oppression of man.  At any rate it
+was so in Taylor's case.  I believe that he would have been patient
+under any inevitable ordinance of nature, but he could not lie still
+under contempt, the knowledge that to those about him he was of less
+consequence than the mud under their feet.  He was timid and, after
+his failure as a shopkeeper, and the near approach to the workhouse,
+he dreaded above everything being again cast adrift.  Strange
+conflict arose in him, for the insults to which he was exposed drove
+him almost to madness; and yet the dread of dismissal in a moment
+checked him when he was about to "fire up," as he called it, and
+reduced him to a silence which was torture.  Once he was ordered to
+bring some coals for the messenger's lobby.  The man who gave him the
+order, finding that he was a long time bringing them, went to the top
+of the stairs, and bawled after him with an oath to make haste.  The
+reason of the delay was that Taylor had two loads to bring up--one
+for somebody else.  When he got to the top of the steps, the
+messenger with another oath took the coals, and saying that he "would
+teach him to skulk there again," kicked the other coal-scuttle down
+to the bottom.  Taylor himself told me this; and yet, although he
+would have rejoiced if the man had dropped down dead, and would
+willingly have shot him, he was dumb.  The check operated in an
+instant.  He saw himself without a penny, and in the streets.  He
+went down into the cellar, and raged and wept for an hour.  Had he
+been a workman, he would probably have throttled his enemy, or tried
+to do it, or what is more likely, his enemy would not have dared to
+treat him in such fashion, but he was powerless, and once losing his
+situation he would have sunk down into the gutter, whence he would
+have been swept by the parish into the indiscriminate heap of London
+pauperism, and carted away to the Union, a conclusion which was worse
+to him than being hung.
+
+Another of our friends was a waiter in one of the public-houses and
+chop-houses combined, of which there are so many in the Strand.  He
+lived in a wretched alley which ran from St. Clement's Church to
+Boswell Court--I have forgotten its name--a dark crowded passage.  He
+was a man of about sixty--invariably called John, without the
+addition of any surname.  I knew him long before we opened our room,
+for I was in the habit of frequently visiting the chop-house in which
+he served.  His hours were incredible.  He began at nine o'clock in
+the morning with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables and
+the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced with early
+luncheons.  Not till three-quarters of an hour after midnight could
+he leave, for the house was much used by persons who supped there
+after the theatres.  During almost the whole of this time he was on
+his legs, and very often he was unable to find two minutes in the day
+in which to get his dinner.  Sundays, however, were free.  John was
+not a head waiter, but merely a subordinate, and I never knew why at
+his time of life he had not risen to a better position.  He used to
+say that "things had been against him," and I had no right to seek
+for further explanations.  He was married, and had had three
+children, of whom one only was living--a boy of ten years old, whom
+he hoped to get into the public-house as a potboy for a beginning.
+Like Taylor, the world had well-nigh overpowered John entirely--
+crushed him out of all shape, so that what he was originally, or
+might have been, it was almost impossible to tell.  There was no
+particular character left in him.  He may once have been this or
+that, but every angle now was knocked off, as it is knocked off from
+the rounded pebbles which for ages have been dragged up and down the
+beach by the waves.  For a lifetime he had been exposed to all sorts
+of whims and caprices, generally speaking of the most unreasonable
+kind, and he had become so trained to take everything without
+remonstrance or murmuring that every cross in his life came to him as
+a chop alleged by an irritated customer to be raw or done to a
+cinder.  Poor wretch! he had one trouble, however, which he could not
+accept with such equanimity, or rather with such indifference.  His
+wife was a drunkard.  This was an awful trial to him.  The worst
+consequence was that his boy knew that his mother got drunk.  The
+neighbours kindly enough volunteered to look after the little man
+when he was not at school, and they waylaid him and gave him dinner
+when his mother was intoxicated; but frequently he was the first when
+he returned to find out that there was nothing for him to eat, and
+many a time he got up at night as late as twelve o'clock, crawled
+downstairs, and went off to his father to tell him that "she was very
+bad, and he could not go to sleep."  The father, then, had to keep
+his son in the Strand till it was time to close, take him back, and
+manage in the best way he could.  Over and over again was he obliged
+to sit by this wretched woman's bedside till breakfast time, and then
+had to go to work as usual.  Let anybody who has seen a case of this
+kind say whether the State ought not to provide for the relief of
+such men as John, and whether he ought not to have been able to send
+his wife away to some institution where she might have been tended
+and restrained from destroying, not merely herself, but her husband
+and her child.  John hardly bore up under this sorrow.  A man may
+endure much, provided he knows that he will be well supported when
+his day's toil is over; but if the help for which he looks fails, he
+falls.  Oh those weary days in that dark back dining-room, from which
+not a square inch of sky was visible! weary days haunted by a fear
+that while he was there unknown mischief was being done! weary days,
+whose close nevertheless he dreaded!  Beaten down, baffled,
+disappointed, if we are in tolerable health we can contrive to live
+on some almost impossible chance, some most distant flicker of hope.
+It is astonishing how minute a crack in the heavy uniform cloud will
+relieve us; but when with all our searching we can see nothing, then
+at last we sink.  Such was John's case when I first came to know him.
+He attracted me rather, and bit by bit he confided his story to me.
+He found out that I might be trusted, and that I could sympathise,
+and he told me what he had never told to anybody before.  I was
+curious to discover whether religion had done anything for him, and I
+put the question to him in an indirect way.  His answer was that
+"some on 'em say there's a better world where everything will be put
+right, but somehow it seemed too good to be true."  That was his
+reason for disbelief, and heaven had not the slightest effect on him.
+He found out the room, and was one of our most constant friends.
+
+Another friend was of a totally different type.  His name was
+Cardinal.  He was a Yorkshireman, broad-shouldered, ruddy in the
+face, short-necked, inclined apparently to apoplexy, and certainly to
+passion.  He was a commercial traveller in the cloth trade, and as he
+had the southern counties for his district, London was his home when
+he was not upon his journeys.  His wife was a curious contrast to
+him.  She was dark-haired, pinched-up, thin-lipped, and always seemed
+as if she suffered from some chronic pain or gnawing--not sufficient
+to make her ill, but sufficient to make her miserable.  They had no
+children.  Cardinal in early life had been a member of an orthodox
+Dissenting congregation, but he had fallen away.  He had nobody to
+guide him, and the position into which he fell was peculiar.  He
+never busied himself about religion or philosophy; indeed he had had
+no training which would have led him to take an interest in abstract
+questions, but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without any
+order and upon no system.  He had no discriminating faculty, and
+mixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels,
+French translations, and the best English authors, provided only they
+were unworldly or sentimental.  Neither did he know how far to take
+what he read and use it in his daily life.  He often selected some
+fantastical motive which he had found set forth as operative in one
+of his heroes, and he brought it into his business, much to the
+astonishment of his masters and customers.  For this reason he was
+not stable.  He changed employers two or three times; and, so far as
+I could make out, his ground of objection to each of the firms whom
+he left might have been a ground of dislike in a girl to a suitor,
+but certainly nothing more.  During the intervals of his engagements,
+unless he was pressed for money, he did nothing--not from laziness,
+but because he had got a notion in his head that his mind wanted rest
+and reinvigoration.  His habit then was to consume the whole day--day
+after day--in reading or in walking out by himself.  It may easily be
+supposed that with a temperament like his, and with nobody near him
+to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes.  His wife and he
+cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last
+degree.  I never saw such jealousy.  It was strange that, although
+she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and
+patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won
+his affection.  He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage
+without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification
+the most ideal theories as to the relation between man and woman.
+Not that he ever went actually wrong.  His boyish education, his
+natural purity, and a fear never wholly suppressed, restrained him.
+He exasperated people by his impracticability, and it must be
+acknowledged that it is very irritating in a difficult complexity
+demanding the gravest consideration--the balancing of this against
+that--to hear a man suddenly propose some naked principle with which
+everybody is acquainted, and decide by it solely.  I came to know him
+through M'Kay, who had known him for years; but M'Kay at last broke
+out against him, and called him a stupid fool when he threw up a
+handsome salary and refused to serve any longer under a house which
+had always treated him well, because they, moving with the times, had
+determined to offer their customers a cheaper description of goods,
+which Cardinal thought was dishonest.  M'Kay said, and said truly,
+that many poor persons would buy these goods who could buy nothing
+else, and that Cardinal, before yielding to such scruples, ought to
+satisfy himself that, by yielding, he would not become a burden upon
+others less fanciful.  This was just what happened.  Cardinal could
+get no work again for a long time, and had to borrow money.  I was
+sorry; but for my part, this and other eccentricities did not disturb
+my confidence in him.  He was an honest, affectionate soul, and his
+peculiarities were a necessary result of the total chaos of a time
+without any moral guidance.  With no church, no philosophy, no
+religion, the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont relax their
+hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and
+thither, arriving at nothing.  Cardinal was adrift, like thousands
+and hundreds of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchy
+darkness of the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voices
+offer us pilotage.  It spoke well for him that he did nothing worse
+than take a few useless phantoms on board which did him no harm, and
+that he held fast to his own instinct for truth and goodness.  I
+never let myself be annoyed by what he produced to me from his books.
+All that I discarded.  Underneath all that was a solid worth which I
+loved, and which was mostly not vocal.  What was vocal in him was, I
+am bound to say, not of much value.
+
+About the time when our room opened, Mrs. Cardinal had become almost
+insupportable to her husband.  Poor woman; I always pitied her; she
+was alone sometimes for a fortnight at a stretch; she read nothing;
+there was no child to occupy her thoughts; she knew that her husband
+lived in a world into which she never entered, and she had nothing to
+do but to brood over imaginary infidelities.  She was literally
+possessed, and who shall be hard upon her?  Nobody cared for her;
+everybody with whom her husband associated disliked her, and she knew
+perfectly well they never asked her to their houses except for his
+sake.  Cardinal vowed at last he would endure her no longer, and that
+they must separate.  He was induced one Sunday morning, when his
+resolution was strong within him, and he was just about to give
+effect to it, to come with us.  The quiet seemed to soothe him, and
+he went home with me afterwards.  He was not slow to disclose to me
+his miserable condition, and his resolve to change it.  I do not know
+now what I said, but it appeared to me that he ought not to change
+it, and that change would be for him most perilous.  I thought that
+with a little care life might become at least bearable with his wife;
+that by treating her not so much as if she were criminal, but as if
+she were diseased, hatred might pass into pity, and pity into
+merciful tenderness to her, and that they might dwell together upon
+terms not harder than those upon which many persons who have made
+mistakes in youth agree to remain with each other; terms which, after
+much consideration, they adjudge it better to accept than to break
+loose, and bring upon themselves and those connected with them all
+that open rupture involves.  The difficulty was to get Cardinal to
+give up his theory of what two abstract human beings should do
+between whom no love exists.  It seemed to him something like atheism
+to forsake his clearly-discerned, simple rule for a course which was
+dictated by no easily-grasped higher law, and it was very difficult
+to persuade him that there is anything of equal authority in a law
+less rigid in its outline.  However, he went home.  I called on him
+some time afterwards, and saw that a peace, or at any rate a truce,
+was proclaimed, which lasted up to the day of his death.  M'Kay and I
+agreed to make as much of Mrs. Cardinal as we could, and yielding to
+urgent invitation, she came to the room.  This wonderfully helped to
+heal her.  She began to feel that she was not overlooked, put on one
+side, or despised, and the bonds which bound her constricted lips
+into bitterness were loosened.
+
+Another friend, and the last whom I shall name, was a young man named
+Clark.  He was lame, and had been so from childhood.  His father was
+a tradesman, working hard from early morning till late at night, and
+burdened with a number of children.  The boy Richard, shut out from
+the companionship of his fellows, had a great love of books.  When he
+left school his father did not know what to do with him--in fact
+there was only one occupation open to him, and that was clerical work
+of one kind or another.  At last he got a place in a house in Fleet
+Street, which did a large business in those days in sending
+newspapers into the country.  His whole occupation all day long was
+to write addresses, and for this he received twenty-five shillings a
+week, his hours being from nine o'clock till seven.  The office in
+which he sat was crowded, and in order to squeeze the staff into the
+smallest space, rent being dear, a gallery had been run round the
+wall about four feet from the ceiling.  This was provided with desks
+and gas lamps, and up there Clark sat, artificial light being
+necessary four days out of five.  He came straight from the town in
+which his father lived to Fleet Street, and once settled in it there
+seemed no chance of change for the better.  He knew what his father's
+struggles were; he could not go back to him, and he had not the
+energy to attempt to lift himself.  It is very doubtful too whether
+he could have succeeded in achieving any improvement, whatever his
+energy might have been.  He had got lodgings in Newcastle Street, and
+to these he returned in the evening, remaining there alone with his
+little library, and seldom moving out of doors.  He was unhealthy
+constitutionally, and his habits contributed to make him more so.
+Everything which he saw which was good seemed only to sharpen the
+contrast between himself and his lot, and his reading was a curse to
+him rather than a blessing.  I sometimes wished that he had never
+inherited any love whatever for what is usually considered to be the
+Best, and that he had been endowed with an organisation coarse and
+commonplace, like that of his colleagues.  If he went into company
+which suited him, or read anything which interested him, it seemed as
+if the ten hours of the gallery in Fleet Street had been made thereby
+only the more insupportable, and his habitual mood was one of
+despondency, so that his fellow clerks who knew his tastes not
+unnaturally asked what was the use of them if they only made him
+wretched; and they were more than ever convinced that in their
+amusements lay true happiness.  Habit, which is the saviour of most
+of us, the opiate which dulls the otherwise unbearable miseries of
+life, only served to make Clark more sensitive.  The monotony of that
+perpetual address-copying was terrible.  He has told me with a kind
+of shame what an effect it had upon him--that sometimes for days he
+would feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle because it
+would break in some slight degree the uniformity of his toil.  For
+example, he would sometimes change from quill to steel pens and back
+again, and he found himself actually looking forward with a kind of
+joy--merely because of the variation--to the day on which he had
+fixed to go back to the quill after using steel.  He would determine,
+two or three days beforehand, to get up earlier, and to walk to Fleet
+Street by way of Great Queen Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and
+upon this he would subsist till the day came.  He could make no
+longer excursions because of his lameness.  All this may sound very
+much like simple silliness to most people, but those who have not
+been bound to a wheel do not know what thoughts come into the head of
+the strongest man who is extended on it.  Clark sat side by side in
+his gallery with other young men of rather a degraded type, and the
+confinement bred in them a filthy grossness with which they tormented
+him.  They excited in him loathsome images, from which he could not
+free himself either by day or night.  He was peculiarly weak in his
+inability to cast off impressions, or to get rid of mental pictures
+when once formed, and his distress at being haunted by these hateful,
+disgusting thoughts was pitiable.  They were in fact almost more than
+thoughts, they were transportations out of himself--real visions.  It
+would have been his salvation if he could have been a carpenter or a
+bricklayer, in country air, but this could not be.
+
+Clark had no power to think connectedly to a conclusion.  When an
+idea came into his head, he dwelt upon it incessantly, and no
+correction of the false path upon which it set him was possible,
+because he avoided society.  Work over, he was so sick of people that
+he went back to himself.  So it came to pass that when brought into
+company, what he believed and cherished was frequently found to be
+open to obvious objection, and was often nothing better than nonsense
+which was rudely, and as he himself was forced to admit, justly
+overthrown.  He ought to have been surrounded with intelligent
+friends, who would have enabled him to see continually the other
+side, and who would have prevented his long and useless wanderings.
+Like many other persons, too, whom I have known--just in proportion
+to his lack of penetrative power was his tendency to occupy himself
+with difficult questions.  By a cruel destiny he was impelled to
+dabble in matters for which he was totally unfitted.  He never could
+go beyond his author a single step, and he lost himself in endless
+mazes.  If he could but have been persuaded to content himself with
+sweet presentations of wholesome happy existence, with stories and
+with history, how much better it would have been for him!  He had had
+no proper training whatever for anything more, he was ignorant of the
+exact meaning of the proper terminology of science, and an unlucky
+day it was for him when he picked up on a bookstall some very early
+translation of some German book on philosophy.  One reason, as may be
+conjectured, for his mistakes was his education in dissenting
+Calvinism, a religion which is entirely metaphysical, and encourages,
+unhappily, in everybody a taste for tremendous problems.  So long as
+Calvinism is unshaken, the mischief is often not obvious, because a
+ready solution taken on trust is provided; but when doubts arise, the
+evil results become apparent, and the poor helpless victim, totally
+at a loss, is torn first in this direction and then in the other, and
+cannot let these questions alone.  He has been taught to believe they
+are connected with salvation, and he is compelled still to busy
+himself with them, rather than with simple external piety.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--DRURY LANE THEOLOGY
+
+
+
+Such were some of our disciples.  I do not think that church or
+chapel would have done them much good.  Preachers are like unskilled
+doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint.  They do
+not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which
+robs us of life.  If any of these persons just described had gone to
+church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set
+topics, none of which would have concerned them.  Their trouble was
+not the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the
+personality of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist.
+They all WANTED something distinctly.  They had great gaping needs
+which they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special.  Some
+of these necessities no words could in any way meet.  It was obvious,
+for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his gallery
+and his copying if he was to live--at least in sanity.  He had
+fortunately learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employment on a
+newspaper.  His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect at
+first, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports were
+not necessary, and he quickly advanced.  Taylor, too, we tried to
+remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-
+of-doors porter.  The poor man was now at least in the open air, and
+freed from insolent tyranny.  This, however, was help such as anybody
+might have given.  The question of most importance is, What gospel
+had we to give?  Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday?  What was
+our justification?  In the first place, there was the simple
+quietude.  The retreat from the streets and from miserable cares into
+a place where there was peace and room for reflection was something.
+It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff at
+religious services.  To the poor the cathedral or the church might be
+an immense benefit, if only for the reason that they present a
+barrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation by
+architecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on something
+beyond the business which presses on them during the week.  Poor
+people frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read.
+Moreover, they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than
+that of a book.  They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything to
+say, when they would not care to look at what he said if it were
+printed.  But to come more closely to the point.  Our main object was
+to create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even some
+joy in it.  That was our religion; that was the central thought of
+all we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything.  We
+admitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, and
+everything which did help us.  Our attempts, to any one who had not
+the key, may have seemed vague and desultory.  We might by a stranger
+have been accused of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in this
+subject and now in that, but after a while he would have found that
+though we were weak creatures, with no pretence to special knowledge
+in any subject, we at least knew what we meant, and tried to
+accomplish it.  For my own part, I was happy when I had struck that
+path.  I felt as if somehow, after many errors, I had once more
+gained a road, a religion in fact, and one which essentially was not
+new but old, the religion of the Reconciliation, the reconciliation
+of man with God; differing from the current creed in so far as I did
+not lay stress upon sin as the cause of estrangement, but yet
+agreeing with it in making it my duty of duties to suppress revolt,
+and to submit calmly and sometimes cheerfully to the Creator.  This
+surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning of all the
+forms of worship which we have seen in the world.  Pain and death are
+nothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism, and
+even insurrection by them, ever since men came into being.  Always,
+however, have the majority, the vast majority of the race, felt
+instinctively that in this scepticism and insurrection they could not
+abide, and they have struggled more or less blindly after
+explanation; determined not to desist till they had found it, and
+reaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes irrational and
+absurd to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to the
+thoughtful.  I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason why all
+great religions should be treated with respect, and in a certain
+sense preserved.  It is nothing less than a wicked waste of
+accumulated human strivings to sneer them out of existence.  They
+will be found, every one of them, to have incarnated certain vital
+doctrines which it has cost centuries of toil and devotion properly
+to appreciate.  Especially is this true of the Catholic faith, and if
+it were worth while, it might be shown how it is nothing less than a
+divine casket of precious remedies, and if it is to be brutally
+broken, it will take ages to rediscover and restore them.  Of one
+thing I am certain, that their rediscovery and restoration will be
+necessary.  I cannot too earnestly insist upon the need of our
+holding, each man for himself, by some faith which shall anchor him.
+It must not be taken up by chance.  We must fight for it, for only so
+will it become OUR faith.  The halt in indifference or in hostility
+is easy enough and seductive enough.  The half-hearted thinks that
+when he has attained that stage he has completed the term of human
+wisdom.  I say go on:  do not stay there; do not take it for granted
+that there is nothing beyond; incessantly attempt an advance, and at
+last a light, dim it may be, will arise.  It will not be a completed
+system, perfect in all points, an answer to all our questions, but at
+least it will give ground for hope.
+
+We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death.
+I do not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to these
+great arguments against us.  We never so much as sought for one,
+knowing how all men had sought and failed.  But we were able to say
+there is some compensation, that there is another side, and this is
+all that man can say.  No theory of the world is possible.  The
+storm, the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening in
+cellars are obvious; but equally obvious are an evening in June, the
+delight of men and women in one another, in music, and in the
+exercise of thought.  There can surely be no question that the sum of
+satisfaction is increasing, not merely in the gross but for each
+human being, as the earth from which we sprang is being worked out of
+the race, and a higher type is being developed.  I may observe, too,
+that although it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed,
+that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us.  Simple
+suspense is in fact very rare, for there are few persons so
+constituted as to be able to remain in it.  It is dogmatism under the
+cloak of doubt which pulls us down.  It is the dogmatism of death,
+for example, which we have to avoid.  The open grave is dogmatic, and
+we say THAT MAN HAS GONE, but this is as much a transgression of the
+limits of certitude as if we were to say HE IS AN ANGEL IN BLISS.
+The proper attitude, the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise
+of the reason is, I DO NOT KNOW; and in this there is an element of
+hope, now rising and now falling, but always sufficient to prevent
+that blank despair which we must feel if we consider it as settled
+that when we lie down under the grass there is an absolute end.
+
+The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immense
+help.  No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon what
+lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is
+loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic.  The
+beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider
+it as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy,
+is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of
+the universe.  Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjectures
+arise, shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot help
+believing as irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction--that the
+sphere of that understanding of ours, whose function it seems to be
+to imprison us, is limited.
+
+Going through a churchyard one afternoon I noticed that nearly all
+the people who were buried there, if the inscriptions on the
+tombstones might be taken to represent the thoughts of the departed
+when they were alive, had been intent solely on their own personal
+salvation.  The question with them all seemed to have been, shall _I_
+go to heaven?  Considering the tremendous difference between heaven
+and hell in the popular imagination, it was very natural that these
+poor creatures should be anxious above everything to know whether
+they would be in hell or heaven for ever.  Surely, however, this is
+not the highest frame of mind, nor is it one to be encouraged.  I
+would rather do all I can to get out of it, and to draw others out of
+it too.  Our aim ought not so much to be the salvation of this poor
+petty self, but of that in me which alone makes it worth while to
+save me; of that alone which I hope will be saved, immortal truth.
+The very centre of the existence of the ordinary chapel-goer and
+church-goer needs to be shifted from self to what is outside self,
+and yet is truly self, and the sole truth of self.  If the truth
+lives, WE live, and if it dies, we are dead.  Our theology stands in
+need of a reformation greater than that of Luther's.  It may be said
+that the attempt to replace the care for self in us by a care for the
+universal is ridiculous.  Man cannot rise to that height.  I do not
+believe it.  I believe we can rise to it.  Every ordinary unselfish
+act is a proof of the capacity to rise to it; and the mother's denial
+of all care for her own happiness, if she can but make her child
+happy, is a sublime anticipation.  It may be called an instinct, but
+in the course of time it will be possible to develop a wider instinct
+in us, so that our love for the truth shall be even maternally
+passionate and self-forgetting.
+
+After all our searching it was difficult to find anything which, in
+the case of a man like John the waiter, for example, could be of any
+service to him.  At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in his
+case the problem presented itself in its simple nakedness.  What
+comfort is there discoverable for the wretched which is not based
+upon illusion?  We could not tell him that all he endured was right
+and proper.  But even to him we were able to offer something.  We did
+all we could to soothe him.  On the Sunday, at least, he was able to
+find some relief from his labours, and he entered into a different
+region.  He came to see us in the afternoon and evening occasionally,
+and brought his boy.  Father and son were pulled up out of the vault,
+brought into the daylight, and led into an open expanse.  We tried
+above everything to interest them, even in the smallest degree, in
+what is universal and impersonal, feeling that in that direction lies
+healing.  We explained to the child as well as we could some morsels
+of science, and in explaining to him we explained to the father as
+well.  When the anguish begotten by some outbreak on the part of the
+wife more violent than usual became almost too much to bear, we did
+our best to counsel, and as a last consolation we could point to
+Death, divine Death, and repose.  It was but for a few more years at
+the utmost, and then must come a rest which no sorrow could invade.
+"Having death as an ally, I do not tremble at shadows," is an
+immortal quotation from some unknown Greek author.  Providence, too,
+by no miracle, came to our relief.  The wife died, as it was foreseen
+she must, and that weight being removed, some elasticity and recoil
+developed itself.  John's one thought now was for his child, and by
+means of the child the father passed out of himself, and connected
+himself with the future.  The child did in fact teach the father
+exactly what we tried to teach, and taught it with a power of
+conviction which never could have been produced by any mere appeals
+to the reason.  The father felt that he was battered, useless, and a
+failure, but that in the boy there were unknown possibilities, and
+that he might in after life say that it was to this battered, useless
+failure of a father he owed his success.  There was nothing now that
+he would not do to help Tom's education, and we joyfully aided as
+best we could.  So, partly I believe by us, but far more by nature
+herself, John's salvation was wrought out at least in a measure;
+discord by the intervention of another note resolved itself into a
+kind of harmony, and even through the skylight in the Strand a
+glimpse of the azure was obtained.
+
+I hope my readers, if I should ever have any, will remember that what
+I wish to do is to give some account of the manner in which we sought
+to be of service to the small and very humble circle of persons whom
+we had collected about us.  I have preserved no record of anything; I
+am merely putting down what now comes into my mind--the two or three
+articles, not thirty-nine, nor, alas! a third of that number--which
+we were able to hold.  I recollect one or two more which perhaps are
+worth preservation.  In my younger days the aim of theologians was
+the justification of the ways of God to man.  They could not succeed.
+They succeeded no better than ourselves in satisfying the intellect
+with a system.  Nor does the Christian religion profess any such
+satisfaction.  It teaches rather the great doctrine of a Remedy, of a
+Mediator; and therein it is profoundly true.  It is unphilosophical
+in the sense that it offers no explanation from a single principle,
+and leaves the ultimate mystery as dark as before, but it is in
+accordance with our intuitions.  Everywhere in nature we see exaction
+of penalties down to the uttermost farthing, but following after this
+we discern forgiveness, obliterating and restorative.  Both
+tendencies exist.  Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more so, for she
+visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; but there is in her
+also an infinite Pity, healing all wounds, softening all calamities,
+ever hastening to alleviate and repair.  Christianity in strange
+historical fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of her
+into a biography and a creed.
+
+We endeavoured to follow Christianity in the depth of its distinction
+between right and wrong.  Herein this religion is of priceless value.
+Philosophy proclaims the unity of our nature.  To philosophy every
+passion is as natural as every act of saintlike negation, and one of
+the usual effects of thinking or philosophising is to bring together
+all that is apparently contrary in man, and to show how it proceeds
+really from one centre.  But Christianity had not to propound a
+theory of man; it had to redeem the world.  It laid awful stress on
+the duality in us, and the stress laid on that duality is the world's
+salvation.  The words right and wrong are not felt now as they were
+felt by Paul.  They shade off one into the other.  Nevertheless, if
+mankind is not to be lost, the ancient antagonism must be maintained.
+The shallowest of mortals is able now to laugh at the notion of a
+personal devil.  No doubt there is no such thing existent; but the
+horror at evil which could find no other expression than in the
+creation of a devil is no subject for laughter, and if it do not in
+some shape or other survive, the race itself will not survive.  No
+religion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such
+profound earnestness on the bisection of man--on the distinction
+within him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and the
+lower, heaven and hell.  What utter folly is it because of an antique
+vesture to condemn as effete what the vesture clothes!  Its doctrine
+and its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of precious
+thoughts purchased by blood and tears.
+
+I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts.
+The theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say.  I
+can only reply that we did our best.  We said all we knew, and we
+would most thankfully have said more, had we been sure that it must
+be true.  I would remind, too, those of our judges who think that we
+were such wretched mortals, blind leaders of the blind, that there
+have been long ages during which men never pretended to understand
+more than we professed to understand.  To say nothing of the Jews,
+whose meagre system would certainly not have been thought either
+satisfying or orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and Romans
+lived in no clearer light than that which shines on me.  The critics,
+too, will condemn because of our weakness; but this defect I at once
+concede.  The severest critic could not possibly be so severe as I am
+upon myself.  I KNOW my failings.  He, probably, would miss many of
+them.  But, again I urge that men are not to be debarred by reason of
+weakness from doing what little good may lie within reach of their
+hands.  Had we attempted to save scholars and thinkers we should have
+deserved the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be visited.  We
+aspired to save nobody.  We knew no salvation ourselves.  We ventured
+humbly to bring a feeble ray of light into the dwellings of two or
+three poor men and women; and if Prometheus, fettered to his rock,
+dwelt with pride on the blind hopes which he had caused to visit
+mortals, the hopes which "stopped the continued anticipation of their
+destiny," we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we thought that what
+we were doing was not altogether vanity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM
+
+
+
+From time to time I received a newspaper from my native town, and one
+morning, looking over the advertisements, I caught sight of one which
+arrested me.  It was as follows:-
+
+
+"A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to little
+children.  Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar,
+High Street."
+
+
+Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen Butts, and that this was
+her advertisement I had not the slightest doubt.  Suddenly, without
+being able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable desire
+to see her arose within me.  I could not understand it.  I
+recollected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour's story years
+ago.  How true that counsel of Miss Arbour's was! and yet it had the
+defect of most counsel.  It was but a principle; whether it suited
+this particular case was the one important point on which Miss Arbour
+was no authority.  What WAS it which prompted this inexplicable
+emotion?  A thousand things rushed through my head without reason or
+order.  I begin to believe that a first love never dies.  A boy falls
+in love at eighteen or nineteen.  The attachment comes to nothing.
+It is broken off for a multitude of reasons, and he sees its
+absurdity.  He marries afterwards some other woman whom he even
+adores, and he has children for whom he spends his life; yet in an
+obscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly the cherished
+picture of the girl who first was dear to him.  She, too, marries.
+In process of time she is fifty years old, and he is fifty-two.  He
+has not seen her for thirty years or more, but he continually turns
+aside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the face as it last
+appeared to him when he left her at her gate and saw her no more.  He
+inquires now and then timidly about her whenever he gets the chance.
+And once in his life he goes down to the town where she lives, solely
+in order to get a sight of her without her knowing anything about it.
+He does not succeed, and he comes back and tells his wife, from whom
+he never conceals any secrets, that he has been away on business.  I
+did not for a moment confess that my love for Ellen had returned.  I
+knew who she was and what she was, and what had led to our
+separation; but nevertheless, all this obstinately remained in the
+background, and all the passages of love between us, all our kisses,
+and above everything, her tears at that parting in her father's
+house, thrust themselves upon me.  It was a mystery to me.  What
+should have induced that utterly unexpected resurrection of what I
+believed to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension.  However,
+the fact remains.  I did not to myself admit that this was love, but
+it WAS love, and that it should have shot up with such swift vitality
+merely because I had happened to see those initials was miraculous.
+I pretended to myself that I should like once more to see Mrs. Butts-
+-perhaps she might be in want and I could help her.  I shrank from
+writing to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hit
+upon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name,
+and requesting her to call at the King's Arms hotel upon a gentleman
+who wished to engage a widow lady to teach his children.  To prevent
+any previous inquiries on her part, I said that my name was Williams,
+that I lived in the country at some little distance from the town,
+but that I should be there on business on the day named.  I took up
+my quarters at the King's Arms the night before.  It seemed very
+strange to be in an inn in the place in which I was born.  I retired
+early to my bedroom, and looked out in the clear moonlight over the
+river.  The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of my former self.  At
+one particular point, so well known, I stood fishing.  At another,
+equally well known, where the water was dangerously deep, I was
+examining the ice; and round the corner was the boathouse where we
+kept the little craft in which I had voyaged so many hundreds of
+miles on excursions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, or,
+still more fascinating, down to where the water widens and sails are
+to be seen, and there is a foretaste of the distant sea.  It is no
+pleasure to me to revisit scenes in which earlier days have been
+passed.  I detest the sentimental melancholy which steals over me;
+the sense of the lapse of time, and the reflection that so many whom
+I knew are dead.  I would always, if possible, spend my holiday in
+some new scene, fresh to me, and full of new interest.  I slept but
+little, and when the morning came, instead of carrying out my purpose
+of wandering through the streets, I was so sick of the mood by which
+I had been helplessly overcome, that I sat at a distance from the
+window in the coffee-room, and read diligently last week's Bell's
+Weekly Messenger.  My reading, however, was nothing.  I do not
+suppose I comprehended the simplest paragraph.  My thoughts were
+away, and I watched the clock slowly turning towards the hour when
+Ellen was to call.  I foresaw that I should not be able to speak to
+her at the inn.  If I have anything particular to say to anybody, I
+can always say it so much better out of doors.  I dreaded the
+confinement of the room, and the necessity for looking into her face.
+Under the sky, and in motion, I should be more at liberty.  At last
+eleven struck from the church in the square, and five minutes
+afterwards the waiter entered to announce Mrs. Butts.  I was
+therefore right, and she was "E. B."  I was sure that I should not be
+recognised.  Since I saw her last I had grown a beard, my hair had
+got a little grey, and she was always a little short-sighted.  She
+came in, and as she entered she put away over her bonnet her thick
+black veil.  Not ten seconds passed before she was seated on the
+opposite side of the table to that on which I was sitting, but I re-
+read in her during those ten seconds the whole history of years.  I
+cannot say that externally she looked worn or broken.  I had imagined
+that I should see her undone with her great troubles, but to some
+extent, and yet not altogether, I was mistaken.  The cheek-bones were
+more prominent than of old, and her dark-brown hair drawn tightly
+over her forehead increased the clear paleness of the face; the just
+perceptible tint of colour which I recollect being now altogether
+withdrawn.  But she was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished.
+There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, and
+although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not
+seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if not
+of joy, at least of resignation.  Her ancient levity of manner had
+vanished, or at most had left nothing but a trace.  I thought I
+detected it here and there in a line about the mouth, and perhaps in
+her walk.  There was a reminiscence of it too in her clothes.
+Notwithstanding poverty and distress, the old neatness--that
+particular care which used to charm me so when I was little more than
+a child, was there still.  I was always susceptible to this virtue,
+and delicate hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed thereon,
+were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty.  I noticed that the
+gloves, though mended, fitted with the same precision, and that her
+dress was unwrinkled and perfectly graceful.  Whatever she might have
+had to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred satisfaction
+which makes life tolerable.
+
+I was impelled at once to say that I had to beg her pardon for asking
+her there.  Unfortunately I was obliged to go over to Cowston, a
+village which was about three miles from the town.  Perhaps she would
+not mind walking part of the way with me through the meadows, and
+then we could talk with more freedom, as I should not feel pressed
+for time.  To this arrangement she at once agreed, and dropping her
+thick veil over her face, we went out.  In a few minutes we were
+clear of the houses, and I began the conversation.
+
+"Have you been in the habit of teaching?"
+
+"No.  The necessity for taking to it has only lately arisen."
+
+"What can you teach?"
+
+"Not much beyond what children of ten or eleven years old are
+expected to know; but I could take charge of them entirely."
+
+"Have you any children of your own?"
+
+"One."
+
+"Could you take a situation as resident teacher if you have a child?"
+
+"I must get something to do, and if I can make no arrangement by
+which my child can live with me, I shall try and place her with a
+friend.  I may be able to hear of some appointment as a daily
+governess."
+
+"I should have thought that in your native town you would have been
+easily able to find employment--you must be well known?"
+
+There was a pause, and after a moment or so she said:-
+
+"We were well known once, but we went abroad and lost all our money.
+My husband died abroad.  When I returned, I found that there was very
+little which my friends could do for me.  I am not accomplished, and
+there are crowds of young women who are more capable than I am.
+Moreover, I saw that I was becoming a burden, and people called on me
+rather as a matter of duty than for any other reason.  You don't know
+how soon all but the very best insensibly neglect very poor relatives
+if they are not gifted or attractive.  I do not wonder at being made
+to feel this, nor do I blame anybody.  My little girl is a cripple,
+my rooms are dull, and I have nothing in me with which to amuse or
+entertain visitors.  Pardon my going into this detail.  It was
+necessary to say something in order to explain my position."
+
+"May I ask what salary you will require if you live in the house?"
+
+"Five-and-thirty pounds a year, but I might take less if I were asked
+to do so."
+
+"Are you a member of the Church of England?"
+
+"No."
+
+"To what religious body do you belong?"
+
+"I am an Independent, but I would go to Church if my employers wished
+it."
+
+"I thought the Independents objected to go to Church."
+
+"They do; but I should not object, if I could hear anything at the
+Church which would help me."
+
+"I am rather surprised at your indifference."
+
+"I was once more particular, but I have seen much suffering, and some
+things which were important to me are not so now, and others which
+were not important have become so."
+
+I then made up a little story.  My sister and I lived together.  We
+were about to take up our abode at Cowston, but were as yet strangers
+to it.  I was left a widower with two little children whom my sister
+could not educate, as she could not spare the time.  She would
+naturally have selected the governess herself, but she was at some
+distance.  She would like to see Mrs. Butts before engaging her
+finally, but she thought that as this advertisement presented itself,
+I might make some preliminary inquiries.  Perhaps, however, now that
+Mrs. Butts knew the facts, she would object to living in the house.
+I put it in this way, feeling sure that she would catch my meaning.
+
+"I am afraid that this situation will not suit me.  I could not go
+backwards and forwards so far every day."
+
+"I understand you perfectly, and feared that this would be your
+decision.  But if you hesitate, I can give you the best of
+references.  I had not thought of that before.  References of course
+will be required by you as well as by me."
+
+I put my hand in my pocket for my pocket-book, but I could not find
+it.  We had now reached a part of our road familiar enough to both of
+us.  Along that very path Ellen and I had walked years ago.  Under
+those very trees, on that very seat had we sat, and she and I were
+there again.  All the old confidences, confessions, tendernesses,
+rushed upon me.  What is there which is more potent than the
+recollection of past love to move us to love, and knit love with
+closest bonds?  Can we ever cease to love the souls who have once
+shared all that we know and feel?  Can we ever be indifferent to
+those who have our secrets, and whose secrets we hold?  As I looked
+at her, I remembered what she knew about me, and what I knew about
+her, and this simple thought so overmastered me, that I could hold
+out no longer.  I said to her that if she would like to rest for one
+moment, I might be able to find my papers.  We sat down together, and
+she drew up her veil to read the address which I was about to give
+her.  She glanced at me, as I thought, with a strange expression of
+excited interrogation, and something swiftly passed across her face,
+which warned me that I had not a moment to lose.  I took out one of
+my own cards, handed it to her, and said, "Here is a reference which
+perhaps you may know."  She bent over it, turned to me, fixed her
+eyes intently and directly on mine for one moment, and then I thought
+she would have fallen.  My arm was around her in an instant, her head
+was on my shoulder, and my many wanderings were over.  It was broad,
+high, sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in those
+fields.  We were roused by the distant sound of the town clock
+striking twelve; we rose and went on together to Cowston by the river
+bank, returning late in the evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO TUO
+
+
+
+I suppose that the reason why in novels the story ends with a
+marriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and
+partly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch,
+determining the career of life after it.  The epoch once announced,
+nothing more need be explained; everything else follows as a matter
+of course.  These notes of mine are autobiographical, and not a
+romance.  I have never known much about epochs.  I have had one or
+two, one specially when I first began to read and think; but after
+that, if I have changed, it has been slowly and imperceptibly.  My
+life, therefore, is totally unfitted to be the basis of fiction.  My
+return to Ellen, and our subsequent marriage, were only partially an
+epoch.  A change had come, but it was one which had long been
+preparing.  Ellen's experiences had altered her position, and mine
+too was altered.  She had been driven into religion by trouble, and
+knowing nothing of criticism or philosophy, retained the old forms
+for her religious feeling.  But the very quickness of her emotion
+caused her to welcome all new and living modes of expressing it.  It
+is only when feeling has ceased to accompany a creed that it becomes
+fixed, and verbal departures from it are counted heresy.  I too cared
+less for argument, and it even gave me pleasure to talk in her
+dialect, so familiar to me, but for so many years unused.
+
+It was now necessary for me to add to my income.  I had nothing upon
+which to depend save my newspaper, which was obviously insufficient.
+At last, I succeeded in obtaining some clerical employment.  For no
+other work was I fit, for my training had not been special in any one
+direction.  My hours were long, from ten in the morning till seven in
+the evening, and as I was three miles distant from the office, I was
+really away from home for eleven hours every day, excepting on
+Sundays.  I began to calculate that my life consisted of nothing but
+the brief spaces allowed to me for rest, and these brief spaces I
+could not enjoy because I dwelt upon their brevity.  There was some
+excuse for me.  Never could there be any duty incumbent upon man much
+more inhuman and devoid of interest than my own.  How often I thought
+about my friend Clark, and his experiences became mine.  The whole
+day I did nothing but write, and what I wrote called forth no single
+faculty of the mind.  Nobody who has not tried such an occupation can
+possibly forecast the strange habits, humours, fancies, and diseases
+which after a time it breeds.  I was shut up in a room half below the
+ground.  In this room were three other men besides myself, two of
+them between fifty and sixty, and one about three or four-and-twenty.
+All four of us kept books or copied letters from ten to seven, with
+an interval of three-quarters of an hour for dinner.  In all three of
+these men, as in the case of Clark's companions, there had been
+developed, partly I suppose by the circumstance of enforced idleness
+of brain, the most loathsome tendency to obscenity.  This was the one
+subject which was common ground, and upon which they could talk.  It
+was fostered too by a passion for beer, which was supplied by the
+publican across the way, who was perpetually travelling to and fro
+with cans.  My horror when I first found out into what society I was
+thrust was unspeakable.  There was a clock within a hundred yards of
+my window which struck the hours and quarters.  How I watched that
+clock!  My spirits rose or fell with each division of the day.  From
+ten to twelve there was nothing but gloom.  By half-past twelve I
+began to discern dinner time, and the prospect was brighter.  After
+dinner there was nothing to be done but doggedly to endure until
+five, and at five I was able to see over the distance from five to
+seven.  My disgust at my companions, however, came to be mixed with
+pity.  I found none of them cruel, and I received many little
+kindnesses from them.  I discovered that their trade was largely
+answerable for the impurity of thought and speech which so shocked
+me.  Its monotony compelled some countervailing stimulus, and as they
+had never been educated to care for anything in particular, they
+found the necessary relief in sensuality.  At first they "chaffed"
+and worried me a good deal because of my silence, but at last they
+began to think I was "religious," and then they ceased to torment me.
+I rather encouraged them in the belief that I had a right to
+exemption from their conversation, and I passed, I believe, for a
+Plymouth brother.  The only thing which they could not comprehend was
+that I made no attempt to convert them.
+
+The whole establishment was under the rule of a deputy-manager, who
+was the terror of the place.  He was tall, thin, and suffered
+occasionally from spitting of blood, brought on no doubt from
+excitement.  He was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion.
+He had complete mastery over every detail of the business, and he
+never blundered.  All his work was thorough, down to the very bottom,
+and he had the most intolerant hatred of everything which was loose
+and inaccurate.  He never passed a day without flaming out into oaths
+and curses against his subordinates, and they could not say in his
+wildest fury that his ravings were beside the mark.  He was wrong in
+his treatment of men--utterly wrong--but his facts were always
+correct.  I never saw anybody hated as he was, and the hatred against
+him was the more intense because nobody could convict him of a
+mistake.  He seemed to enjoy a storm, and knew nothing whatever of
+the constraints which with ordinary men prevent abusive and brutal
+language to those around them.  Some of his clerks suffered greatly
+from him, and he almost broke down two or three from the constant
+nervous strain upon them produced by fear of his explosions.  For my
+own part, although I came in for a full share of his temper, I at
+once made up my mind as soon as I discovered what he was, not to open
+my lips to him except under compulsion.  My one object now was to get
+a living.  I wished also to avoid the self-mortification which must
+ensue from altercation.  I dreaded, as I have always dreaded beyond
+what I can tell, the chaos and wreck which, with me, follows
+subjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provocation.
+It was very difficult, but how many times I have blessed myself for
+adhesion to it.  Instead of going home undone with excitement, and
+trembling with fear of dismissal, I have walked out of my dungeon
+having had to bite my lips till the blood came, but still conqueror,
+and with peace of mind.
+
+Another stratagem of defence which I adopted at the office was never
+to betray to a soul anything about myself.  Nobody knew anything
+about me, whether I was married or single, where I lived, or what I
+thought upon a single subject of any importance.  I cut off my office
+life in this way from my life at home so completely that I was two
+selves, and my true self was not stained by contact with my other
+self.  It was a comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck
+seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered
+nothing by having anything to do with it.  I was not the person who
+sat at the desk downstairs and endured the abominable talk of his
+colleagues and the ignominy of serving such a chief.  I knew nothing
+about him.  I was a citizen walking London streets; I had my opinions
+upon human beings and books; I was on equal terms with my friends; I
+was Ellen's husband; I was, in short, a man.  By this scrupulous
+isolation, I preserved myself, and the clerk was not debarred from
+the domain of freedom.
+
+It is very terrible to think that the labour by which men are to live
+should be of this order.  The ideal of labour is that it should be
+something in which we can take an interest and even a pride.  Immense
+masses of it in London are the merest slavery, and it is as
+mechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus horse.  There is no
+possibility of relieving it, and all the ordinary copybook advice of
+moralists and poets as to the temper in which we should earn our
+bread is childish nonsense.  If a man is a painter, or a physician,
+or a barrister, or even a tradesman, well and good.  The maxims of
+authors may be of some service to him, and he may be able to
+exemplify them; but if he is a copying clerk they are an insult, and
+he can do nothing but arch his back to bear his burden and find some
+compensation elsewhere.  True it is, that beneficent Nature here, as
+always, is helpful.  Habit, after a while, mitigated much of the
+bitterness of destiny.  The hard points of the flint became smoothed
+and worn away by perpetual tramping over them, so that they no longer
+wounded with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot was
+in time provided with a merciful callosity.  Then, too, there was
+developed an appetite which was voracious for all that was best.  Who
+shall tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never have
+known had I lived a life of idleness!  Ellen was fond of hearing me
+read, and with a little care I was able to select what would bear
+reading--dramas, for example.  She liked the reading for the
+reading's sake, and she liked to know that what I thought was
+communicated to her; that she was not excluded from the sphere in
+which I lived.  Of the office she never heard a word, and I never
+would tell her anything about it; but there was scarcely a single
+book in my possession which could be read aloud, that we did not go
+through together in this way.  I don't prescribe this kind of life to
+everybody.  Some of my best friends, I know, would find it
+intolerable, but it suited us.  Philosophy and religion I did not
+touch.  It was necessary to choose themes with varying human
+interest, such as the best works of fiction, a play, or a poem; and
+these perhaps, on the whole, did me more good at that time than
+speculation.  Oh, how many times have I left my office humiliated by
+some silently endured outbreak on the part of my master, more galling
+because I could not put it aside as altogether gratuitous; and in
+less than an hour it was two miles away, and I was myself again.  If
+a man wants to know what the potency of love is, he must be a menial;
+he must be despised.  Those who are prosperous and courted cannot
+understand its power.  Let him come home after he has suffered what
+is far worse than hatred--the contempt of a superior, who knows that
+he can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he can replace his
+slave at a moment's notice.  Let him be trained by his tyrant to
+dwell upon the thought that he belongs to the vast crowd of people in
+London who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom it is a charity
+to offer employment; who are conscious of possessing no gift which
+makes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend the
+divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear.
+God's mercy be praised ever more for it!  I cannot write poetry, but
+if I could, no theme would tempt me like that of love to such a
+person as I was--not love, as I say again, to the hero, but love to
+the Helot.  Over and over again, when I have thought about it, I have
+felt my poor heart swell with a kind of uncontrollable fervour.  I
+have often, too, said to myself that this love is no delusion.  If we
+were to set it down as nothing more than a merciful cheat on the part
+of the Creator, however pleasant it might be, it would lose its
+charm.  If I were to think that my wife's devotion to me is nothing
+more than the simple expression of a necessity to love somebody, that
+there is nothing in me which justifies such devotion, I should be
+miserable.  Rather, I take it, is the love of woman to man a
+revelation of the relationship in which God stands to him--of what
+OUGHT to be, in fact.  In the love of a woman to the man who is of no
+account God has provided us with a true testimony of what is in His
+own heart.  I often felt this when looking at myself and at Ellen.
+"What is there in me?" I have said, "is she not the victim of some
+self-created deception?" and I was wretched till I considered that in
+her I saw the Divine Nature itself, and that her passion was a stream
+straight from the Highest.  The love of woman is, in other words, a
+living witness never failing of an actuality in God which otherwise
+we should never know.  This led me on to connect it with
+Christianity; but I am getting incoherent and must stop.
+
+My employment now was so incessant, for it was still necessary that I
+should write for my newspaper--although my visits to the House of
+Commons had perforce ceased--that I had no time for any schemes or
+dreams such as those which had tormented me when I had more leisure.
+In one respect this was a blessing.  Destiny now had prescribed for
+me.  I was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought to do.  My
+present duty was obviously to get my own living, and having got that,
+I could do little besides save continue the Sundays with M'Kay.
+
+We were almost entirely alone.  We had no means of making any
+friends.  We had no money, and no gifts of any kind.  We were neither
+of us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless,
+what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with
+persons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a
+twopenny omnibus fare.  Certain it is, that we went out of our way
+sometimes to induce people to call upon us whom we thought we should
+like; but, if they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off,
+and we saw no more of them.  This behaviour was so universal that,
+without the least affectation, I acknowledge there must be something
+repellent in me, but what it is I cannot tell.  That Ellen was the
+cause of the general aversion, it is impossible to believe.  The only
+theory I have is, that partly owing to a constant sense of fatigue,
+due to imperfect health, and partly to chafing irritation at mere
+gossip, although I had no power to think of anything better, or say
+anything better myself, I was avoided both by the commonplace and
+those who had talent.  Commonplace persons avoided me because I did
+not chatter, and persons of talent because I stood for nothing.
+"There was nothing in me."  We met at M'Kay's two gentlemen whom we
+thought we might invite to our house.  One of them was an
+antiquarian.  He had discovered in an excavation in London some Roman
+remains.  This had led him on to the study of the position and
+boundaries of the Roman city.  He had become an authority upon this
+subject, and had lectured upon it.  He came; but as we were utterly
+ignorant, and could not, with all our efforts, manifest any sympathy
+which he valued at the worth of a pin, he soon departed, and departed
+for ever.  The second was a student of Elizabethan literature, and I
+rashly concluded at once that he must be most delightful.  He
+likewise came.  I showed him my few poor books, which he condemned,
+and I found that such observations as I could make he considered as
+mere twaddle.  I knew nothing, or next to nothing, about the editions
+or the curiosities, or the proposed emendations of obscure passages,
+and he, too, departed abruptly.  I began to think after he had gone
+that my study of Shakespeare was mere dilettantism but I afterwards
+came to the conclusion that if a man wishes to spoil himself for
+Shakespeare, the best thing he can do is to turn Shakespearian
+critic.
+
+My worst enemy at this time was ill health, and it was more
+distressing than it otherwise would have been, because I had such
+responsibilities upon me.  When I lived alone I knew that if anything
+should happen to me it would be of no particular consequence, but now
+whenever I felt sick I was anxious on account of Ellen.  What would
+become of her--this was the thought which kept me awake night after
+night when the terrors of depression were upon me, as they often
+were.  But still, terrors with growing years had lost their ancient
+strength.  My brain and nerves were quiet compared with what they
+were in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson
+which is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of
+what is dreadful in it lies in the imagination.  The true Gorgon head
+is seldom seen in reality.  That it exists I do not doubt, but it is
+not so commonly visible as we think.  Again, as we get older we find
+that all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we
+walk courageously on.  The labourer marries and has children, when
+there is nothing but his own strength between him and ruin.  A
+million chances are encountered every day, and any one of the million
+accidents which might happen would cripple him or kill him, and put
+into the workhouse those who depend upon him.  Yet he treads his path
+undisturbed.  Life to all of us is a narrow plank placed across a
+gulf, which yawns on either side, and if we were perpetually looking
+down into it we should fall.  So at last, the possibility of disaster
+ceased to affright me.  I had been brought off safely so many times
+when destruction seemed imminent, that I grew hardened, and lay down
+quietly at night, although the whim of a madman might to-morrow cast
+me on the pavement.  Frequently, as I have said, I could not do this,
+but I strove to do it, and was able to do it when in health.
+
+I tried to think about nothing which expressed whatever in the world
+may be insoluble or simply tragic.  A great change is just beginning
+to come over us in this respect.  So many books I find are written
+which aim merely at new presentation of the hopeless.  The
+contradictions of fate, the darkness of death, the fleeting of man
+over this brief stage of existence, whence we know not, and whither
+we know not, are favourite subjects with writers who seem to think
+that they are profound, because they can propose questions which
+cannot be answered.  There is really more strength of mind required
+for resolving the commonest difficulty than is necessary for the
+production of poems on these topics.  The characteristic of so much
+that is said and written now is melancholy; and it is melancholy, not
+because of any deeper acquaintance with the secrets of man than that
+which was possessed by our forefathers, but because it is easy to be
+melancholy, and the time lacks strength.
+
+As I am now setting down, without much order or connection, the
+lessons which I had to learn, I may perhaps be excused if I add one
+or two others.  I can say of them all, that they are not book
+lessons.  They have been taught me by my own experience, and as a
+rule I have always found that in my own most special perplexities I
+got but little help from books or other persons.  I had to find out
+for myself what was for me the proper way of dealing with them.
+
+My love for Ellen was great, but I discovered that even such love as
+this could not be left to itself.  It wanted perpetual cherishing.
+The lamp, if it was to burn brightly, required daily trimming, for
+people became estranged and indifferent, not so much by open quarrel
+or serious difference, as by the intervention of trifles which need
+but the smallest, although continuous effort for their removal.  The
+true wisdom is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at once.
+Love, too, requires that the two persons who love one another shall
+constantly present to one another what is best in them, and to
+accomplish this, deliberate purpose, and even struggle, are
+necessary.  If through relapse into idleness we do not attempt to
+bring soul and heart into active communion day by day, what wonder if
+this once exalted relationship become vulgar and mean?
+
+I was much overworked.  It was not the work itself which was such a
+trial, but the time it consumed.  At best, I had but a clear space of
+an hour, or an hour and a half at home, and to slave merely for this
+seemed such a mockery!  Day after day sped swiftly by, made up of
+nothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself--Is this
+life?  But I made up my mind that NEVER WOULD I GIVE MYSELF TONGUE.
+I clapped a muzzle on my mouth.  Had I followed my own natural bent,
+I should have become expressive about what I had to endure, but I
+found that expression reacts on him who expresses and intensifies
+what is expressed.  If we break out into rhetoric over a toothache,
+the pangs are not the easier, but the worse to be borne.
+
+I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward from the present
+moment to one beyond.  The whole week seemed to exist for the Sunday.
+On Monday morning I began counting the hours till Sunday should
+arrive.  The consequence was, that when it came, it was not enjoyed
+properly, and I wasted it in noting the swiftness of its flight.  Oh,
+how absurd is man!  If we were to reckon up all the moments which we
+really enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them to be!
+The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our lives is spent in
+dreaming over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed in
+the anticipation of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged,
+even to the grave.  This tendency, unconquerable though it may appear
+to be, can to a great extent at any rate, be overcome by strenuous
+discipline.  I tried to blind myself to the future, and many and many
+a time, as I walked along that dreary New Road or Old St. Pancras
+Road, have I striven to compel myself not to look at the image of
+Hampstead Heath or Regent's Park, as yet six days in front of me, but
+to get what I could out of what was then with me.
+
+The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare what we are with
+what we might be is no doubt of enormous value, and is the spring
+which prompts all action, but, like every instinct, it is the source
+of greatest danger.  I remember the day and the very spot on which it
+flashed into me, like a sudden burst of the sun's rays, that I had no
+right to this or that--to so much happiness, or even so much virtue.
+What title-deeds could I show for such a right?  Straightway it
+seemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction were
+removed, and as if the system collapsed.  God, creating from His
+infinite resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with
+a definite position on the scale, and that position only could I
+claim.  Cease the trick of contrast.  If I can by any means get
+myself to consider myself alone without reference to others,
+discontent will vanish.  I walk this Old St. Pancras Road on foot--
+another rides.  Keep out of view him who rides and all persons
+riding, and I shall not complain that I tramp in the wet.  So also
+when I think how small and weak I am.
+
+How foolish it is to try and cure by argument what time will cure so
+completely and so gently if left to itself.  As I get older, the
+anxiety to prove myself right if I quarrel dies out.  I hold my
+tongue and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate me, or
+convicts me if I am wrong.  Many and many a debate too which I have
+had with myself alone has been settled in the same way.  The question
+has been put aside and has lost its importance.  The ancient Church
+thought, and seriously enough, no doubt, that all the vital interests
+of humanity were bound up with the controversies upon the Divine
+nature; but the centuries have rolled on, and who cares for those
+controversies now.  The problems of death and immortality once upon a
+time haunted me so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them.
+I cannot tell how, but so it is, that at the present moment, when I
+am years nearer the end, they trouble me but very little.  If I could
+but bury and let rot things which torment me and come to no
+settlement--if I could always do this--what a blessing it would be.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--HOLIDAYS
+
+
+
+I have said that Ellen had a child by her first husband.  Marie, for
+that was her name, was now ten years old.  She was like neither her
+mother nor father, and yet was SHOT as it were with strange gleams
+which reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and then
+disappeared.  She had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes,
+round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose in
+particular being so.  She had a tendency to be stout.  For books she
+did not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught her
+to read.  She was not orderly or careful about her person, and in
+this respect was a sore disappointment--not that she was positively
+careless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and
+her wardrobe neat.  She was fond of bright colours, which was another
+trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness.  She was not
+by any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of
+expressing herself upon persons and things.  A stranger looking at
+her would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, and
+dull.  She was neither one nor the other.  She ate little, although
+she was fond of sweets.  Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut
+outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was
+capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more
+remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not
+passion which she suffered to explode.  I remember once when she was
+a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea.  She was dressed
+and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not
+go.  She besought, but it was in vain.  We could not afford cabs, and
+there was no omnibus.  Marie, finding all her entreaties were
+useless, quietly walked out of the room; and after some little time
+her mother, calling her and finding she did not come, went to look
+for her.  She had gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there in
+the rain by the side of the water-butt.  She was soaked, and her best
+clothes were spoiled.  I must confess that I did not take very kindly
+to her.  I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, in
+fact, painful to be obliged to teach her.  I thought that perhaps she
+might have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, and
+our attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies were a failure.
+She was more or less of a locked cabinet to me.  I tried her with the
+two or three keys which I had, but finding that none of them fitted,
+I took no more pains about her.
+
+One Sunday we determined upon a holiday.  It was a bold adventure for
+us, but we had made up our minds.  There was an excursion train to
+Hastings, and accordingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were at London
+Bridge Station early in the morning.  It was a lovely summer's day in
+mid-July.  The journey down was uncomfortable enough in consequence
+of the heat and dust, but we heeded neither one nor the other in the
+hope of seeing the sea.  We reached Hastings at about eleven o'clock,
+and strolled westwards towards Bexhill.  Our pleasure was exquisite.
+Who can tell, save the imprisoned Londoner, the joy of walking on the
+clean sea-sand!  What a delight that was, to say nothing of the
+beauty of the scenery!  To be free of the litter and filth of a
+London suburb, of its broken hedges, its brickbats, its torn
+advertisements, its worn and trampled grass in fields half given over
+to the speculative builder:  in place of this, to tread the
+immaculate shore over which breathed a wind not charged with soot; to
+replace the dull, shrouding obscurity of the smoke by a distance so
+distinct that the masts of the ships whose hulls were buried below
+the horizon were visible--all this was perfect bliss.  It was not
+very poetic bliss, perhaps; but nevertheless it is a fact that the
+cleanness of the sea and the sea air was as attractive to us as any
+of the sea attributes.  We had a wonderful time.  Only in the country
+is it possible to note the change of morning into mid-day, of mid-day
+into afternoon, and of afternoon into evening; and it is only in the
+country, therefore, that a day seems stretched out into its proper
+length.  We had brought all our food with us, and sat upon the shore
+in the shadow of a piece of the cliff.  A row of heavy white clouds
+lay along the horizon almost unchangeable and immovable, with their
+summit-lines and the part of the mass just below them steeped in
+sunlight.  The level opaline water differed only from a floor by a
+scarcely perceptible heaving motion, which broke into the faintest of
+ripples at our feet.  So still was the great ocean, so quietly did
+everything lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach were
+as pure and bright as if they were a part of the mid-ocean depths.
+About a mile from us, at one o'clock, a long row of porpoises
+appeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for half-an-hour or
+so, till they went out farther to sea off Fairlight.  Some fishing-
+boats were becalmed just in front of us.  Their shadows slept, or
+almost slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone showing that
+it was not complete sleep, or if sleep, that it was sleep with
+dreams.  The intensity of the sunlight sharpened the outlines of
+every little piece of rock, and of the pebbles, in a manner which
+seemed supernatural to us Londoners.  In London we get the heat of
+the sun, but not his light, and the separation of individual parts
+into such vivid isolation was so surprising that even Marie noticed
+it, and said it "all seemed as if she were looking through a glass."
+It was perfect--perfect in its beauty--and perfect because, from the
+sun in the heavens down to the fly with burnished wings on the hot
+rock, there was nothing out of harmony.  Everything breathed one
+spirit.  Marie played near us; Ellen and I sat still, doing nothing.
+We wanted nothing, we had nothing to achieve; there were no
+curiosities to be seen, there was no particular place to be reached,
+no "plan of operations," and London was forgotten for the time.  It
+lay behind us in the north-west, and the cliff was at the back of us
+shutting out all thought of it.  No reminiscences and no
+anticipations disturbed us; the present was sufficient, and occupied
+us totally.
+
+I should like, if I could, to write an essay upon the art of enjoying
+a holiday.  It is sad to think how few people know how to enjoy one,
+although they are so precious.  We do not sufficiently consider that
+enjoyment of every kind is an art carefully to be learnt, and
+specially the art of making the most of a brief space set apart for
+pleasure.  It is foolish, for example, if a man, city bred, has but
+twelve hours before him, to spend more of it in eating and drinking
+than is necessary.  Eating and drinking produce stupidity, at least
+in some degree, which may just as well be reserved for town.  It is
+foolish also to load the twelve hours with a task--so much to be
+done.  The sick person may perhaps want exercise, but to the
+tolerably healthy the best of all recreation is the freedom from
+fetters even when they are self-imposed.
+
+Our train homewards was due at Bexhill a little after seven.  By five
+o'clock a change gradual but swift was observed.  The clouds which
+had charmed us all through the morning and afternoon were in reality
+thunder-clouds, which woke up like a surprised army under perfect
+discipline, and moved magnificently towards us.  Already afar off we
+heard the softened echoing roll of the thunder.  Every now and then
+we saw a sharp thrust of lightning down into the water, and shuddered
+when we thought that perhaps underneath that stab there might be a
+ship with living men.  The battle at first was at such a distance
+that we watched it with intense and solemn delight.  As yet not a
+breath of air stirred, but presently, over in the south-east, a dark
+ruffled patch appeared on the horizon, and we agreed that it was time
+to go.  The indistinguishable continuous growl now became articulated
+into distinct crashes.  I had miscalculated the distance to the
+station, and before we got there the rain, skirmishing in advance,
+was upon us.  We took shelter in a cottage for a moment in order that
+Ellen might get a glass of water--bad-looking stuff it was, but she
+was very thirsty--and put on her cloak.  We then started again on our
+way.  We reached the station at about half-past six, before the
+thunder was overhead, but not before Ellen had got wet, despite all
+my efforts to protect her.  She was also very hot from hurrying, and
+yet there was nothing to be done but to sit in a kind of covered shed
+till the train came up.  The thunder and lightning were, however, so
+tremendous, that we thought of nothing else.  When they were at their
+worst, the lightning looked like the upset of a cauldron of white
+glowing metal--with such strength, breadth, and volume did it
+descend.  Just as the train arrived, the roar began to abate, and in
+about half-an-hour it had passed over to the north, leaving behind
+the rain, cold and continuous, which fell all round us from a dark,
+heavy, grey sky.  The carnage in which we were was a third-class,
+with seats arranged parallel to the sides.  It was crowded, and we
+were obliged to sit in the middle, exposed to the draught which the
+tobacco smoke made necessary.  Some of the company were noisy, and
+before we got to Red Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks which
+had been well filled at Hastings began to work.  Many were drenched,
+and this was an excuse for much of the drinking; although for that
+matter, any excuse or none is generally sufficient.  At Red Hill we
+were stopped by other trains, and before we came to Croydon we were
+an hour late.  We had now become intolerably weary.  The songs were
+disgusting, and some of the women who were with the men had also been
+drinking, and behaved in a manner which it was not pleasant that
+Ellen and Marie should see.  The carriage was lighted fortunately by
+one dim lamp only which hung in the middle, and I succeeded at last
+in getting seats at the further end, where there was a knot of more
+decent persons who had huddled up there away from the others.  All
+the glory of the morning was forgotten.  Instead of three happy,
+exalted creatures, we were three dejected, shivering mortals, half
+poisoned with foul air and the smell of spirits.  We crawled up to
+London Bridge at the slowest pace, and, finally, the railway company
+discharged us on the platform at ten minutes past eleven.  Not a
+place in any omnibus could be secured, and we therefore walked for a
+mile or so till I saw a cab, which--unheard-of expense for me--I
+engaged, and we were landed at our own house exactly at half-past
+twelve.  The first thing to be done was to get Marie to bed.  She was
+instantly asleep, and was none the worse for her journey.  With Ellen
+the case was different.  She could not sleep, and the next morning
+was feverish.  She insisted that it was nothing more than a bad cold,
+and would on no account permit me even to give her any medicine.  She
+would get up presently, and she and Marie could get on well enough
+together.  But when I reached home on Monday evening, Ellen was
+worse, and was still in bed.
+
+I sent at once for the doctor, who would give no opinion for a day or
+two, but meanwhile directed that she was to remain where she was, and
+take nothing but the lightest food.  Tuesday night passed, and the
+fever still increased.  I had become very anxious, but I dared not
+stay with her, for I knew not what might happen if I were absent from
+my work.  I was obliged to try and think of somebody who would come
+and help us.  Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal-porter at
+Somerset House, came into my mind.  He, as I have said when talking
+about him, was married, but had no children.  To him accordingly I
+went.  I never shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted his
+wife to go, and with which she consented.  I was shut up in my own
+sufferings, but I remember a flash of joy that all our efforts in our
+room had not been in vain.  I was delighted that I had secured
+assistance, but I do believe the uppermost thought was delight that
+we had been able to develop gratitude and affection.  Mrs. Taylor was
+an "ordinary woman."  She was about fifty, rather stout, and entirely
+uneducated.  But when she took charge at our house, all her best
+qualities found expression.  It is true enough, omnium consensu capax
+imperii nisi imperasset, but it is equally true that under the
+pressure of trial and responsibility we are often stronger than when
+there is no pressure.  Many a man will acknowledge that in difficulty
+he has surprised himself by a resource and coolness which he never
+suspected before.  Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be rather weak and
+untrustworthy, but I found that when WEIGHT was placed upon her, she
+was steady as a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager.  There was
+no doubt in a very short time as to the nature of the disease.  It
+was typhoid fever, the cause probably being the impure water drunk as
+we were coming home.  I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered.
+Suffice it to say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watching
+her every minute night and day, and administering small quantities of
+milk.  Her prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without the
+most constant attention she might at any moment have slipped out of
+our hands.  I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polar
+country, whose existence depends upon one spark of fire, which he
+tries to cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes.  Oh those
+days, prolonged to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted-
+-days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry desire that her
+life might be spared!--days filled with a forecast of the blackness
+and despair before me if she should depart.  I tried to obtain
+release from the office.  The answer was that nobody could of course
+prevent my being away, but that it was not usual for a clerk to be
+absent merely because his wife was not well.  The brute added with a
+sneer that a wife was "a luxury" which he should have thought I could
+hardly afford.  We divided between us, however, at home the twenty-
+four hours during which we stood sentinels against death, and
+occasionally we were relieved by one or two friends.  I went on duty
+from about eight in the evening till one in the morning, and was then
+relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained till ten or eleven.  She then
+went to bed, and was replaced by little Marie.  What a change came
+over that child!  I was amazed at her.  All at once she seemed to
+have found what she was born to do.  The key had been discovered,
+which unlocked and revealed what there was in her, of which hitherto
+I had been altogether unaware.  Although she was so little, she
+became a perfect nurse.  Her levity disappeared; she was grave as a
+matron, moved about as if shod in felt, never forgot a single
+direction, and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers who
+called.  Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a single
+day.  Never did she relax during the whole of that dreadful time, or
+show the slightest sign of discontent.  She sat by her mother's side,
+intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken up
+into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed.  I remember
+once going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almost
+breaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness--remorse,
+that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially;
+and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much of
+His own divinest grace.  Fool that I was, not to be aware that
+messages from Him are not to be read through the envelope in which
+they are enclosed.  I never should have believed, if it had not been
+for Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a child.  Such love, I
+should have said, was only possible between man and woman, or,
+perhaps, between man and man.  But now I doubt whether a love of that
+particular kind could be felt towards any grown-up human being, love
+so pure, so imperious, so awful.  My love to Marie was love of God
+Himself as He is--an unrestrained adoration of an efflux from Him,
+adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation had clothed
+itself with a child's form.  It was, as I say, the love of God as He
+is.  It was not necessary, as it so often is necessary, to qualify,
+to subtract, to consider the other side, to deplore the obscurity or
+the earthly contamination with which the Word is delivered to us.
+This was the Word itself, without even consciousness on the part of
+the instrument selected for its vocalisation.  I may appear
+extravagant, but I can only put down what I felt and still feel.  I
+appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification.  I had seen the
+kingdom of God through a little child.  I, in fact, have done nothing
+more than beat out over a page in my own words what passed through
+His mind when He called a little child and set him in the midst of
+His disciples.  How I see the meaning of those words now! and so it
+is that a text will be with us for half a lifetime, recognised as
+great and good, but not penetrated till the experience comes round to
+us in which it was born.
+
+Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickered
+on the wick began to turn white and show some strength.  At last,
+however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality which
+increased with change of diet.  Every evening when I came home I was
+gladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe,
+was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery as
+she was pleased for her own sake.  She, too, was one of those
+creatures who always generously admit improvement.  For my own part,
+I have often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been getting
+better, I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been an
+effort to me to say that things were not at their worst.  She,
+however, had none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only for
+the sake of her friends, took the cheerful side.  Mrs. Taylor now
+left us.  She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, as
+long as life lasts.  She had seen all our troubles and our poverty:
+we knew that she knew all about us:  she had helped us with the most
+precious help--what more was there necessary to knit her to us?--and
+it is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her
+noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her
+debt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeply
+attached to us.
+
+It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, but
+at last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and we
+determined to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday before
+the cold weather came.  It was again Sunday--a perfectly still, warm,
+autumnal day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from the
+west.  The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted at
+first whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog told
+me that we should escape from it with that wind if we got to the
+chalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford.  We took the early
+train to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up into
+the woods at the top.  We were beyond the smoke, which rested like a
+low black cloud over the city in the north-east, reaching a third of
+the way up to the zenith.  The beech had changed colour, and glowed
+with reddish-brown fire.  We sat down on a floor made of the leaves
+of last year.  At mid-day the stillness was profound, broken only by
+the softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spread
+over us their protecting arms.  Every now and then it died down
+almost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if the
+Gods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk.  By
+moving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld the
+plain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex and
+Hampshire.  It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above it was
+spread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degrees
+into azure over our heads.  The exhilaration of the air satisfied
+Marie, although she had no playmate, and there was nothing special
+with which she could amuse herself.  She wandered about looking for
+flowers and ferns, and was content.  We were all completely happy.
+We strained our eyes to see the furthest point before us, and we
+tried to find it on the map we had brought with us.  The season of
+the year, which is usually supposed to make men pensive, had no such
+effect upon us.  Everything in the future, even the winter in London,
+was painted by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no sadness.
+Rather did summer dying in such fashion fill our hearts with repose,
+and even more than repose--with actual joy.
+
+
+Here ends the autobiography.  A month after this last holiday my
+friend was dead and buried.  He had unsuspected disease of the heart,
+and one day his master, of whom we have heard something, was more
+than usually violent.  Mark, as his custom was, was silent, but
+evidently greatly excited.  His tyrant left the room; and in a few
+minutes afterwards Mark was seen to turn white and fall forward in
+his chair.  It was all over!  His body was taken to a hospital and
+thence sent home.  The next morning his salary up to the day of his
+death came in an envelope to his widow, without a single word from
+his employers save a request for acknowledgment.  Towards mid-day,
+his office coat, and a book found in his drawer, arrived in a brown
+paper parcel, carriage unpaid.
+
+On looking over his papers, I found the sketch of his life and a mass
+of odds and ends, some apparently written for publication.  Many of
+these had evidently been in envelopes, and had most likely,
+therefore, been offered to editors or publishers, but all, I am sure,
+had been refused.  I add one or two by way of appendix, and hope they
+will be thought worth saving.
+
+R. S.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  This was written many years ago, but is curiously pertinent to
+the discussions of this year.--EDITOR, 1884.
+
+{2}  Not exactly untrue, but it sounds strangely now when socialism,
+nationalisation of the land, and other projects have renewed in men
+the hope of regeneration by political processes.  The reader will,
+however, please remember the date of these memoirs.--EDITOR, 1884.
+
+
+
+
+
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+<a href="#startoftext">Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, by Mark Rutherford</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, by M. Rutherford
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+Title: Mark Rutherford's Deliverance
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5338]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 2, 2002]
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+</pre>
+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MARK RUTHERFORD&rsquo;S DELIVERANCE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER I - NEWSPAPERS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+When I had established myself in my new lodgings in Camden Town, I found
+I had ten pounds in my pocket, and again there was no outlook.&nbsp;
+I examined carefully every possibility.&nbsp; At last I remembered that
+a relative of mine, who held some office in the House of Commons, added
+to his income by writing descriptive accounts of the debates, throwing
+in by way of supplement any stray scraps of gossip which he was enabled
+to collect.&nbsp; The rules of the House as to the admission of strangers
+were not so strict then as they are now, and he assured me that if I
+could but secure a commission from a newspaper, he could pass me into
+one of the galleries, and, when there was nothing to be heard worth
+describing, I could remain in the lobby, where I should by degrees find
+many opportunities of picking up intelligence which would pay.&nbsp;
+So far, so good; but how to obtain the commission?&nbsp; I managed to
+get hold of a list of all the country papers, and I wrote to nearly
+every one, offering my services.&nbsp; I am afraid that I somewhat exaggerated
+them, for I had two answers, and, after a little correspondence, two
+engagements.&nbsp; This was an unexpected stroke of luck; but alas!
+both journals circulated in the same district.&nbsp; I never could get
+together more stuff than would fill about a column and a half, and consequently
+I was obliged, with infinite pains, to vary, so that it could not be
+recognised, the form of what, at bottom, was essentially the same matter.&nbsp;
+This was work which would have been disagreeable enough, if I had not
+now ceased in a great measure to demand what was agreeable.&nbsp; In
+years past I coveted a life, not of mere sensual enjoyment - for that
+I never cared - but a life which should be filled with activities of
+the noblest kind, and it was intolerable to me to reflect that all my
+waking hours were in the main passed in merest drudgery, and that only
+for a few moments at the beginning or end of the day could it be said
+that the higher sympathies were really operative.&nbsp; Existence to
+me was nothing but these few moments, and consequently flitted like
+a shadow.&nbsp; I was now, however, the better of what was half disease
+and half something healthy and good.&nbsp; In the first place, I had
+discovered that my appetite was far larger than my powers.&nbsp; Consumed
+by a longing for continuous intercourse with the best, I had no ability
+whatever to maintain it, and I had accepted as a fact, however mysterious
+it might be, that the human mind is created with the impulses of a seraph
+and the strength of a man.&nbsp; Furthermore, what was I that I should
+demand exceptional treatment?&nbsp; Thousands of men and women superior
+to myself, are condemned, if that is the proper word to use, to almost
+total absence from themselves.&nbsp; The roar of the world for them
+is never lulled to rest, nor can silence ever be secured in which the
+voice of the Divine can be heard.<br>
+<br>
+My letters were written twice a week, and as each contained a column
+and a half, I had six columns weekly to manufacture.&nbsp; These I was
+in the habit of writing in the morning, my evenings being spent at the
+House.&nbsp; At first I was rather interested, but after a while the
+occupation became tedious beyond measure, and for this reason.&nbsp;
+In a discussion of any importance about fifty members perhaps would
+take part, and had made up their minds beforehand to speak.&nbsp; There
+could not possibly be more than three or four reasons for or against
+the motion, and as the knowledge that what the intending orator had
+to urge had been urged a dozen times before on that very night never
+deterred him from urging it again, the same arguments, diluted, muddled,
+and mispresented, recurred with the most wearisome iteration.<br>
+<br>
+The public outside knew nothing or very little of the real House of
+Commons, and the manner in which time was squandered there, for the
+reports were all of them much abbreviated.&nbsp; In fact, I doubt whether
+anybody but the Speaker, and one or two other persons in the same position
+as myself, really felt with proper intensity what the waste was, and
+how profound was the vanity of members and the itch for expression;
+for even the reporters were relieved at stated intervals, and the impression
+on their minds was not continuous.&nbsp; Another evil result of these
+attendances at the House was a kind of political scepticism.&nbsp; Over
+and over again I have seen a Government arraigned for its conduct of
+foreign affairs.&nbsp; The evidence lay in masses of correspondence
+which it would have required some days to master, and the verdict, after
+knowing the facts, ought to have depended upon the application of principles,
+each of which admitted a contrary principle for which much might be
+pleaded.&nbsp; There were not fifty members in the House with the leisure
+or the ability to understand what it was which had actually happened,
+and if they had understood it, they would not have had the wit to see
+what was the rule which ought to have decided the case.&nbsp; Yet, whether
+they understood or not, they were obliged to vote, and what was worse,
+the constituencies also had to vote, and so the gravest matters were
+settled in utter ignorance.&nbsp; This has often been adduced as an
+argument against an extended suffrage, but, if it is an argument against
+anything, it is an argument against intrusting the aristocracy and even
+the House itself with the destinies of the nation; for no dock labourer
+could possibly be more entirely empty of all reasons for action than
+the noble lords, squires, lawyers, and railway directors whom I have
+seen troop to the division bell.&nbsp; There is something deeper than
+this scepticism, but the scepticism is the easiest and the most obvious
+conclusion to an open mind dealing so closely and practically with politics
+as it was my lot to do at this time of my life.&nbsp; Men must be governed,
+and when it comes to the question, by whom? I, for one, would far sooner
+in the long run trust the people at large than I would the few, who
+in everything which relates to Government are as little instructed as
+the many and more difficult to move.&nbsp; The very fickleness of the
+multitude, the theme of such constant declamation, is so far good that
+it proves a susceptibility to impressions to which men hedged round
+by impregnable conventionalities cannot yield. <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a><br>
+<br>
+When I was living in the country, the pure sky and the landscape formed
+a large portion of my existence, so large that much of myself depended
+on it, and I wondered how men could be worth anything if they could
+never see the face of nature.&nbsp; For this belief my early training
+on the &ldquo;Lyrical Ballads&rdquo; is answerable.&nbsp; When I came
+to London the same creed survived, and I was for ever thirsting for
+intercourse with my ancient friend.&nbsp; Hope, faith, and God seemed
+impossible amidst the smoke of the streets.&nbsp; It was now very difficult
+for me, except at rare opportunities, to leave London, and it was necessary
+for me, therefore, to understand that all that was essential for me
+was obtainable there, even though I should never see anything more than
+was to be seen in journeying through the High Street, Camden Town, Tottenham
+Court Road, the Seven Dials, and Whitehall.&nbsp; I should have been
+guilty of a simple surrender to despair if I had not forced myself to
+make this discovery.&nbsp; I cannot help saying, with all my love for
+the literature of my own day, that it has an evil side to it which none
+know except the millions of sensitive persons who are condemned to exist
+in great towns.&nbsp; It might be imagined from much of this literature
+that true humanity and a belief in God are the offspring of the hills
+or the ocean; and by implication, if not expressly, the vast multitudes
+who hardly ever see the hills or the ocean must be without a religion.&nbsp;
+The long poems which turn altogether upon scenery, perhaps in foreign
+lands, and the passionate devotion to it which they breathe, may perhaps
+do good in keeping alive in the hearts of men a determination to preserve
+air, earth, and water from pollution; but speaking from experience as
+a Londoner, I can testify that they are most depressing, and I would
+counsel everybody whose position is what mine was to avoid these books
+and to associate with those which will help him in his own circumstances.<br>
+<br>
+Half of my occupation soon came to an end.&nbsp; One of my editors sent
+me a petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find
+out himself, and that he required something more &ldquo;graphic and
+personal.&rdquo;&nbsp; I could do no better, or rather I ought to say,
+no worse than I had been doing.&nbsp; These letters were a great trouble
+to me.&nbsp; I was always conscious of writing so much of which I was
+not certain, and so much which was indifferent to me.&nbsp; The unfairness
+of parties haunted me.&nbsp; But I continued to write, because I saw
+no other way of getting a living, and surely it is a baser dishonesty
+to depend upon the charity of friends because some pleasant, clean,
+ideal employment has not presented itself, than to soil one&rsquo;s
+hands with a little of the inevitable mud.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t think
+I ever felt anything more keenly than I did a sneer from an acquaintance
+of mine who was in the habit of borrowing money from me.&nbsp; He was
+a painter, whose pictures were never sold because he never worked hard
+enough to know how to draw, and it came to my ears indirectly that he
+had said that &ldquo;he would rather live the life of a medieval ascetic
+than condescend to the degradation of scribbling a dozen columns weekly
+of utter trash on subjects with which he had no concern.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+At that very moment he owed me five pounds.&nbsp; God knows that I admitted
+my dozen columns to be utter trash, but it ought to have been forgiven
+by those who saw that I was struggling to save myself from the streets
+and to keep a roof over my head.&nbsp; Degraded, however, as I might
+be, I could not get down to the &ldquo;graphic and personal,&rdquo;
+for it meant nothing less than the absolutely false.&nbsp; I therefore
+contrived to exist on the one letter, which, excepting the mechanical
+labour of writing a second, took up as much of my time as if I had to
+write two.<br>
+<br>
+Never, but once or twice at the most, did my labours meet with the slightest
+recognition beyond payment.&nbsp; Once I remember that I accused a member
+of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the House, and as
+he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to the editor denying
+the charge.&nbsp; The editor without any inquiry - and I believe I was
+mistaken - instantly congratulated me on having &ldquo;scored.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+At another time, when Parliament was not sitting, I ventured, by way
+of filling up my allotted space, to say a word on behalf of a now utterly
+forgotten novel.&nbsp; I had a letter from the authoress thanking me,
+but alas! the illusion vanished.&nbsp; I was tempted by this one novel
+to look into others which I found she had written, and I discovered
+that they were altogether silly.&nbsp; The attraction of the one of
+which I thought so highly, was due not to any real merit which it possessed,
+but to something I had put into it.&nbsp; It was dead, but it had served
+as a wall to re-echo my own voice.&nbsp; Excepting these two occasions,
+I don&rsquo;t think that one solitary human being ever applauded or
+condemned one solitary word of which I was the author.&nbsp; All my
+friends knew where my contributions were to be found, but I never heard
+that they looked at them.&nbsp; They were never worth reading, and yet
+such complete silence was rather lonely.&nbsp; The tradesman who makes
+a good coat enjoys the satisfaction of having fitted and pleased his
+customer, and a bricklayer, if he be diligent, is rewarded by knowing
+that his master understands his value, but I never knew what it was
+to receive a single response.&nbsp; I wrote for an abstraction; and
+spoke to empty space.&nbsp; I cannot help claiming some pity and even
+respect for the class to which I belonged.&nbsp; I have heard them called
+all kinds of hard names, hacks, drudges, and something even more contemptible,
+but the injustice done to them is monstrous.&nbsp; Their wage is hardly
+earned; it is peculiarly precarious, depending altogether upon their
+health, and no matter how ill they may be they must maintain the liveliness
+of manner which is necessary to procure acceptance.&nbsp; I fell in
+with one poor fellow whose line was something like my own.&nbsp; I became
+acquainted with him through sitting side by side with him at the House.&nbsp;
+He lived in lodgings in Goodge Street, and occasionally I walked with
+him as far as the corner of Tottenham Court Road, where I caught the
+last omnibus northward.&nbsp; He wrote like me a &ldquo;descriptive
+article&rdquo; for the country, but he also wrote every now and then
+- a dignity to which I never attained - a &ldquo;special&rdquo; for
+London.&nbsp; His &ldquo;descriptive articles&rdquo; were more political
+than mine, and he was obliged to be violently Tory.&nbsp; His creed,
+however, was such a pure piece of professionalism, that though I was
+Radical, and was expected to be so, we never jarred, and often, as we
+wandered homewards, we exchanged notes, and were mutually useful, his
+observations appearing in my paper, and mine in his, with proper modifications.&nbsp;
+How he used to roar in the <i>Gazette </i>against the opposite party,
+and yet I never heard anything from him myself but what was diffident
+and tender.&nbsp; He had acquired, as an instrument necessary to him,
+an extraordinarily extravagant style, and he laid about him with a bludgeon,
+which inevitably descended on the heads of all prominent persons if
+they happened not to be Conservative, no matter what their virtues might
+be.&nbsp; One peculiarity, however, I noted in him.&nbsp; Although he
+ought every now and then, when the subject was uppermost, to have flamed
+out in the <i>Gazette </i>on behalf of the Church, I never saw a word
+from him on that subject.&nbsp; He drew the line at religion.&nbsp;
+He did not mind acting his part in things secular, for his performances
+were, I am sure, mostly histrionic, but there he stopped.&nbsp; The
+unreality of his character was a husk surrounding him, but it did not
+touch the core.&nbsp; It was as if he had said to himself, &ldquo;Political
+controversy is nothing to me, and, what is more, is so uncertain that
+it matters little whether I say yes or no, nor indeed does it matter
+if I say yes <i>and </i>no, and I must keep my wife and children from
+the workhouse; but when it comes to the relationship of man to God,
+it is a different matter.&rdquo;&nbsp; His altogether outside vehemence
+and hypocrisy did in fact react upon him, and so far from affecting
+harmfully what lay deeper, produced a more complete sincerity and transparency
+extending even to the finest verbal distinctions.&nbsp; Over and over
+again have I heard him preach to his wife, almost with pathos, the duty
+of perfect exactitude in speech in describing the commonest occurrences.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Now, my dear, <i>is </i>that so?&rdquo; was a perpetual remonstrance
+with him; and he always insisted upon it that there is no training more
+necessary for children than that of teaching them not merely to speak
+the truth in the ordinary, vulgar sense of the term, but to speak it
+in a much higher sense, by rigidly compelling, point by point, a correspondence
+of the words with the fact external or internal.&nbsp; He never would
+tolerate in his own children a mere hackneyed, borrowed expression,
+but demanded exact portraiture; and nothing vexed him more than to hear
+one of them spoil and make worthless what he or she had seen, by reporting
+it in some stale phrase which had been used by everybody.&nbsp; This
+refusal to take the trouble to watch the presentment to the mind of
+anything which had been placed before it, and to reproduce it in its
+own lines and colours was, as he said, nothing but falsehood, and he
+maintained that the principal reason why people are so uninteresting
+is not that they have nothing to say.&nbsp; It is rather that they will
+not face the labour of saying in their own tongue what they have to
+say, but cover it up and conceal it in commonplace, so that we get,
+not what they themselves behold and what they think, but a hieroglyphic
+or symbol invented as the representative of a certain class of objects
+or emotions, and as inefficient to represent a particular object or
+emotion as <i>x</i> or <i>y</i> to set forth the relation of Hamlet
+to Ophelia.&nbsp; He would even exercise his children in this art of
+the higher truthfulness, and would purposely make them give him an account
+of something which he had seen and they had seen, checking them the
+moment he saw a lapse from originality.&nbsp; Such was the Tory correspondent
+of the <i>Gazette.<br>
+<br>
+</i>I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in his day it signified
+little or nothing whether Tory or Whig was in power.&nbsp; Politics
+had not become what they will one day become, a matter of life or death,
+dividing men with really private love and hate.&nbsp; What a mockery
+controversy was in the House!&nbsp; How often I have seen members, who
+were furious at one another across the floor, quietly shaking hands
+outside, and inviting one another to dinner!&nbsp; I have heard them
+say that we ought to congratulate ourselves that parliamentary differences
+do not in this country breed personal animosities.&nbsp; To me this
+seemed anything but a subject of congratulation.&nbsp; Men who are totally
+at variance ought not to be friends, and if Radical and Tory are not
+totally, but merely superficially at variance, so much the worse for
+their Radicalism and Toryism.<br>
+<br>
+It is possible, and even probable, that the public fury and the subsequent
+amity were equally absurd.&nbsp; Most of us have no real loves and no
+real hatreds.&nbsp; Blessed is love, less blessed is hatred, but thrice
+accursed is that indifference which is neither one nor the other, the
+muddy mess which men call friendship.<br>
+<br>
+M&rsquo;Kay - for that was his name - lived, as I have said, in Goodge
+Street, where he had unfurnished apartments.&nbsp; I often spent part
+of the Sunday with him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by saying
+that I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself from inconsistency
+in denouncing members of Parliament for their duplicity, M&rsquo;Kay
+and myself being also guilty of something very much like it.&nbsp; But
+there was this difference between us and our parliamentary friends,
+that we always divested ourselves of all hypocrisy when we were alone.&nbsp;
+We then dropped the stage costume which members continued to wear in
+the streets and at the dinner-table, and in which some of them even
+slept and said their prayers.<br>
+<br>
+London Sundays to persons who are not attached to any religious community,
+and have no money to spend, are rather dreary.&nbsp; We tried several
+ways of getting through the morning.&nbsp; If we heard that there was
+a preacher with a reputation, we went to hear him.&nbsp; As a rule,
+however, we got no good in that way.&nbsp; Once we came to a chapel
+where there was a minister supposed to be one of the greatest orators
+of the day.&nbsp; We had much difficulty in finding standing room.&nbsp;
+Just as we entered we heard him say, &ldquo;My friends, I appeal to
+those of you who are parents.&nbsp; You know that if you say to a child
+&lsquo;go,&rsquo; he goeth, and if you say &lsquo;come,&rsquo; he cometh.&nbsp;
+So the Lord&rdquo; - But at this point M&rsquo;Kay, who had children,
+nudged me to come out; and out we went.&nbsp; Why does this little scene
+remain with me?&nbsp; I can hardly say, but here it stands.&nbsp; It
+is remembered, not so much by reason of the preacher as by reason of
+the apparent acquiescence and admiration of the audience, who seemed
+to be perfectly willing to take over an experience from their pastor
+- if indeed it was really an experience - which was not their own.&nbsp;
+Our usual haunts on Sunday were naturally the parks and Kensington Gardens;
+but artificial limited enclosures are apt to become wearisome after
+a time, and we longed for a little more freedom if a little less trim.&nbsp;
+So we would stroll towards Hampstead or Highgate, the only drawback
+to these regions being the squalid, ragged, half town, half suburb,
+through which it was necessary to pass.&nbsp; The skirts of London when
+the air is filled with north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless,
+and the least cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast
+wandering masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves.&nbsp;
+At the corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to be
+devoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generally
+encamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts.&nbsp; Swarms of people
+lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-house
+to open.&nbsp; Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are not exhilarating,
+but the costermonger found many customers who bought his nuts, and ate
+them, merely because they had nothing better to do.&nbsp; We went two
+or three times to a freethinking hall, where we were entertained with
+demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs and Jewish heroes,
+and arguments to prove that the personal existence of the devil was
+a myth, the audience breaking out into uproarious laughter at comical
+delineations of Noah and Jonah.&nbsp; One morning we found the place
+completely packed.&nbsp; A &ldquo;celebrated Christian,&rdquo; as he
+was described to us, having heard of the hall, had volunteered to engage
+in debate on the claims of the Old Testament to Divine authority.&nbsp;
+He turned out to be a preacher whom we knew quite well.&nbsp; He was
+introduced by his freethinking antagonist, who claimed for him a respectful
+hearing.&nbsp; The preacher said that before beginning he should like
+to &ldquo;engage in prayer.&rdquo;&nbsp; Accordingly he came to the
+front of the platform, lifted up his eyes, told God why he was there,
+and besought Him to bless the discussion in the conversion &ldquo;of
+these poor wandering souls, who have said in their hearts that there
+is no God, to a saving faith in Him and in the blood of Christ.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I expected that some resentment would be displayed when the wandering
+souls found themselves treated like errant sheep, but to my surprise
+they listened with perfect silence; and when he had said &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo;
+there were great clappings of hands, and cries of &ldquo;Bravo.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+They evidently considered the prayer merely as an elocutionary show-piece.&nbsp;
+The preacher was much disconcerted, but he recovered himself, and began
+his sermon, for it was nothing more.&nbsp; He enlarged on the fact that
+men of the highest eminence had believed in the Old Testament.&nbsp;
+Locke and Newton had believed in it, and did it not prove arrogance
+in us to doubt when the &ldquo;gigantic intellect which had swept the
+skies, and had announced the law which bound the universe together was
+satisfied?&rdquo;&nbsp; The witness of the Old Testament to the New
+was another argument, but his main reliance was upon the prophecies.&nbsp;
+From Adam to Isaiah there was a continuous prefigurement of Christ.&nbsp;
+Christ was the point to which everything tended; and &ldquo;now, my
+friends,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I cannot sit down without imploring
+you to turn your eyes on Him who never yet repelled the sinner, to wash
+in that eternal Fountain ever open for the remission of sins, and to
+flee from the wrath to come.&nbsp; I believe the sacred symbol of the
+cross has not yet lost its efficacy.&nbsp; For eighteen hundred years,
+whenever it has been exhibited to the sons of men, it has been potent
+to reclaim and save them.&nbsp; &lsquo;I, if I be lifted up,&rsquo;
+cried the Great Sufferer, &lsquo;will draw all men unto Me,&rsquo; and
+He has drawn not merely the poor and ignorant but the philosopher and
+the sage.&nbsp; Oh, my brethren, think what will happen if you reject
+Him.&nbsp; I forbear to paint your doom.&nbsp; And think again, on the
+other hand, of the bliss which awaits you if you receive Him, of the
+eternal companionship with the Most High and with the spirits of just
+men made perfect.&rdquo;&nbsp; His hearers again applauded vigorously,
+and none less so than their appointed leader, who was to follow on the
+other side.&nbsp; He was a little man with small eyes; his shaven face
+was dark with a black beard lurking under the skin, and his nose was
+slightly turned up.&nbsp; He was evidently a trained debater who had
+practised under railway arches, discussion &ldquo;forums,&rdquo; and
+in the classes promoted by his sect.&nbsp; He began by saying that he
+could not compliment his friend who had just sat down on the inducements
+which he had offered them to become Christians.&nbsp; The New Cut was
+not a nice place on a wet day, but he had rather sit at a stall there
+all day long with his feet on a basket than lie in the bosom of some
+of the just men made perfect portrayed in the Bible.&nbsp; Nor, being
+married, should he feel particularly at ease if he had to leave his
+wife with David.&nbsp; David certainly ought to have got beyond all
+that kind of thing, considering it must be over 3000 years since he
+first saw Bathsheba; but we are told that the saints are for ever young
+in heaven, and this treacherous villain, who would have been tried by
+a jury of twelve men and hung outside Newgate if he had lived in the
+nineteenth century, might be dangerous now.&nbsp; He was an amorous
+old gentleman up to the very last.&nbsp; (Roars of laughter.)&nbsp;
+Nor did the speaker feel particularly anxious to be shut up with all
+the bishops, who of course are amongst the elect, and on their departure
+from this vale of tears tempered by ten thousand a year, are duly supplied
+with wings.&nbsp; Much more followed in the same strain upon the immorality
+of the Bible heroes, their cruelty, and the cruelty of the God who sanctioned
+it.&nbsp; Then followed a clever exposition of the inconsistencies of
+the Old Testament history, the impossibility of any reference to Jesus
+therein, and a really earnest protest against the quibbling by which
+those who believed in the Bible as a revelation sought to reconcile
+it with science.&nbsp; &ldquo;Finally,&rdquo; said the speaker, &ldquo;I
+am sure we all of us will pass a vote of thanks to our reverend friend
+for coming to see us, and we cordially invite him to come again.&nbsp;
+If I might be allowed to offer a suggestion, it would be that he should
+make himself acquainted with our case before he pays us another visit,
+and not suppose that we are to be persuaded with the rhetoric which
+may do very well for the young women of his congregation, but won&rsquo;t
+go down here.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was fair and just, for the eminent Christian
+was nothing but an ordinary minister, who, when he was prepared for
+his profession, had never been allowed to see what are the historical
+difficulties of Christianity, lest he should be overcome by them.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were almost devoid of the
+faculty for appreciating the great remains of antiquity, and would probably
+have considered the machinery of the Prometheus Bound or of the Iliad
+a sufficient reason for a sneer.&nbsp; That they should spend their
+time in picking the Bible to pieces when there was so much positive
+work for them to do, seemed to me as melancholy as if they had spent
+themselves upon theology.&nbsp; To waste a Sunday morning in ridiculing
+such stories as that of Jonah was surely as imbecile as to waste it
+in proving their verbal veracity.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER II - M&rsquo;KAY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street.&nbsp;
+The churches and chapels were emptying themselves, but the great mass
+of the population had been &ldquo;nowhere.&rdquo;&nbsp; I had dinner
+with M&rsquo;Kay, and as the day wore on the fog thickened.&nbsp; London
+on a dark Sunday afternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is
+depressing.&nbsp; The inhabitants drag themselves hither and thither
+in languor and uncertainty.&nbsp; Small mobs loiter at the doors of
+the gin palaces.&nbsp; Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling &ldquo;walnuts&rdquo;
+with a cry so melancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly
+lost may be imagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by
+the monotony of a million years.<br>
+<br>
+About two or three o&rsquo;clock decent working men in their best clothes
+emerge from the houses in such streets as Nassau Street.&nbsp; It is
+part of their duty to go out after dinner on Sunday with the wife and
+children.&nbsp; The husband pushes the perambulator out of the dingy
+passage, and gazes doubtfully this way and that way, not knowing whither
+to go, and evidently longing for the Monday, when his work, however
+disagreeable it may be, will be his plain duty.&nbsp; The wife follows
+carrying a child, and a boy and girl in unaccustomed apparel walk by
+her side.&nbsp; They come out into Mortimer Street.&nbsp; There are
+no shops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the earth is mud under
+their feet, the muddy houses stretch in long rows, black, gaunt, uniform.&nbsp;
+The little party reach Hyde Park, also wrapped in impenetrable mud-grey.&nbsp;
+The man&rsquo;s face brightens for a moment as he says, &ldquo;It is
+time to go back,&rdquo; and so they return, without the interchange
+of a word, unless perhaps they happen to see an omnibus horse fall down
+on the greasy stones.&nbsp; What is there worth thought or speech on
+such an expedition?&nbsp; Nothing!&nbsp; The tradesman who kept the
+oil and colour establishment opposite to us was not to be tempted outside.&nbsp;
+It was a little more comfortable than Nassau Street, and, moreover,
+he was religious and did not encourage Sabbath-breaking.&nbsp; He and
+his family always moved after their mid-day Sabbath repast from the
+little back room behind the shop up to what they called the drawing-room
+overhead.&nbsp; It was impossible to avoid seeing them every time we
+went to the window.&nbsp; The father of the family, after his heavy
+meal, invariably sat in the easy-chair with a handkerchief over his
+eyes and slept.&nbsp; The children were always at the windows, pretending
+to read books, but in reality watching the people below.&nbsp; At about
+four o&rsquo;clock their papa generally awoke, and demanded a succession
+of hymn tunes played on the piano.&nbsp; When the weather permitted,
+the lower sash was opened a little, and the neighbours were indulged
+with the performance of &ldquo;Vital Spark,&rdquo; the father &ldquo;coming
+in&rdquo; now and then with a bass note or two at the end where he was
+tolerably certain of the harmony.&nbsp; At five o&rsquo;clock a prophecy
+of the incoming tea brought us some relief from the contemplation of
+the landscape or brick-scape.&nbsp; I say &ldquo;some relief,&rdquo;
+for meals at M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s were a little disagreeable.&nbsp; His
+wife was an honest, good little woman, but so much attached to him and
+so dependent on him that she was his mere echo.&nbsp; She had no opinions
+which were not his, and whenever he said anything which went beyond
+the ordinary affairs of the house, she listened with curious effort,
+and generally responded by a weakened repetition of M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s
+own observations.&nbsp; He perpetually, therefore, had before him an
+enfeebled reflection of himself, and this much irritated him, notwithstanding
+his love for her; for who could help loving a woman who, without the
+least hesitation, would have opened her veins at his command, and have
+given up every drop of blood in her body for him?&nbsp; Over and over
+again I have heard him offer some criticism on a person or event, and
+the customary chime of approval would ensue, provoking him to such a
+degree that he would instantly contradict himself with much bitterness,
+leaving poor Mrs. M&rsquo;Kay in much perplexity.&nbsp; Such a shot
+as this generally reduced her to timid silence.&nbsp; As a rule, he
+always discouraged any topic at his house which was likely to serve
+as an occasion for showing his wife&rsquo;s dependence on him.&nbsp;
+He designedly talked about her household affairs, asked her whether
+she had mended his clothes and ordered the coals.&nbsp; She knew that
+these things were not what was upon his mind, and she answered him in
+despairing tones, which showed how much she felt the obtrusive condescension
+to her level.&nbsp; I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my
+emotion at the sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame
+me and I was obliged to get up and go.&nbsp; She was childishly affectionate.&nbsp;
+If M&rsquo;Kay came in and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her
+face brightened into the sweetest and happiest smile.&nbsp; I recollect
+once after he had been unusually annoyed with her he repented just as
+he was leaving home, and put his lips to her head, holding it in both
+his hands.&nbsp; I saw her gently take the hand from her forehead and
+press it to her mouth, the tears falling down her cheek meanwhile.&nbsp;
+Nothing would ever tempt her to admit anything against her husband.&nbsp;
+M&rsquo;Kay was violent and unjust at times.&nbsp; His occupation he
+hated, and his restless repugnance to it frequently discharged itself
+indifferently upon everything which came in his way.&nbsp; His children
+often thought him almost barbarous, but in truth he did not actually
+see them when he was in one of these moods.&nbsp; What was really present
+with him, excluding everything else, was the sting of something more
+than usually repulsive of which they knew nothing.&nbsp; Mrs. M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s
+answer to her children&rsquo;s remonstrances when they were alone with
+her always was, &ldquo;He is so worried,&rdquo; and she invariably dwelt
+upon their faults which had given him the opportunity for his wrath.<br>
+<br>
+I think M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s treatment of her wholly wrong.&nbsp; I think
+that he ought not to have imposed himself upon her so imperiously.&nbsp;
+I think he ought to have striven to ascertain what lay concealed in
+that modest heart, to have encouraged its expression and development,
+to have debased himself before her that she might receive courage to
+rise, and he would have found that she had something which he had not;
+not <i>his</i> something perhaps, but something which would have made
+his life happier.&nbsp; As it was, he stood upon his own ground above
+her.&nbsp; If she could reach him, well and good, if not, the helping
+hand was not proffered, and she fell back, hopeless.&nbsp; Later on
+he discovered his mistake.&nbsp; She became ill very gradually, and
+M&rsquo;Kay began to see in the distance a prospect of losing her.&nbsp;
+A frightful pit came in view.&nbsp; He became aware that he could not
+do without her.&nbsp; He imagined what his home would have been with
+other women whom he knew, and he confessed that with them he would have
+been less contented.&nbsp; He acknowledged that he had been guilty of
+a kind of criminal epicurism; that he rejected in foolish, fatal, nay,
+even wicked indifference, the bread of life upon which he might have
+lived and thriven.&nbsp; His whole effort now was to suppress himself
+in his wife.&nbsp; He read to her, a thing he never did before, and
+when she misunderstood, he patiently explained; he took her into his
+counsels and asked her opinion; he abandoned his own opinion for hers,
+and in the presence of her children he always deferred to her, and delighted
+to acknowledge that she knew more than he did, that she was right and
+he was wrong.&nbsp; She was now confined to her house, and the end was
+near, but this was the most blessed time of her married life.&nbsp;
+She grew under the soft rain of his loving care, and opened out, not,
+indeed, into an oriental flower, rich in profound mystery of scent and
+colour, but into a blossom of the chalk-down.&nbsp; Altogether concealed
+and closed she would have remained if it had not been for this beneficent
+and heavenly gift poured upon her.&nbsp; He had just time enough to
+see what she really was, and then she died.&nbsp; There are some natures
+that cannot unfold under pressure or in the presence of unregarding
+power.&nbsp; Hers was one.&nbsp; They require a clear space round them,
+the removal of everything which may overmaster them, and constant delicate
+attention.&nbsp; They require too a recognition of the fact, which M&rsquo;Kay
+for a long time did not recognise, that it is folly to force them and
+to demand of them that they shall be what they cannot be.&nbsp; I stood
+by the grave this morning of my poor, pale, clinging little friend now
+for some years at peace, and I thought that the tragedy of Promethean
+torture or Christ-like crucifixion may indeed be tremendous, but there
+is a tragedy too in the existence of a soul like hers, conscious of
+its feebleness and ever striving to overpass it, ever aware that it
+is an obstacle to the return of the affection of the man whom she loves.<br>
+<br>
+Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s, and
+when we wanted to talk we went out of doors.&nbsp; The evening after
+our visit to the debating hall we moved towards Portland Place, and
+walked up and down there for an hour or more.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay had
+a passionate desire to reform the world.&nbsp; The spectacle of the
+misery of London, and of the distracted swaying hither and thither of
+the multitudes who inhabit it, tormented him incessantly.&nbsp; He always
+chafed at it, and he never seemed sure that he had a right to the enjoyment
+of the simplest pleasures so long as London was before him.&nbsp; What
+a farce, he would cry, is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture,
+when millions of wretched mortals are doomed to the eternal darkness
+and crime of the city!&nbsp; Here are the educated classes occupying
+themselves with exquisite emotions, with speculations upon the Infinite,
+with addresses to flowers, with the worship of waterfalls and flying
+clouds, and with the incessant portraiture of a thousand moods and variations
+of love, while their neighbours lie grovelling in the mire, and never
+know anything more of life or its duties than is afforded them by a
+police report in a bit of newspaper picked out of the kennel.&nbsp;
+We went one evening to hear a great violin-player, who played such music,
+and so exquisitely, that the limits of life were removed.&nbsp; But
+we had to walk up the Haymarket home, between eleven and twelve o&rsquo;clock,
+and the violin-playing became the merest trifling.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay
+had been brought up upon the Bible.&nbsp; He had before him, not only
+there, but in the history of all great religious movements, a record
+of the improvement of the human race, or of large portions of it, not
+merely by gradual civilisation, but by inspiration spreading itself
+suddenly.&nbsp; He could not get it out of his head that something of
+this kind is possible again in our time.&nbsp; He longed to try for
+himself in his own poor way in one of the slums about Drury Lane.&nbsp;
+I sympathised with him, but I asked him what he had to say.&nbsp; I
+remember telling him that I had been into St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral,
+and that I pictured to myself the cathedral full, and myself in the
+pulpit.&nbsp; I was excited while imagining the opportunity offered
+me of delivering some message to three or four thousand persons in such
+a building, but in a minute or two I discovered that my sermon would
+be very nearly as follows: &ldquo;Dear friends, I know no more than
+you know; we had better go home.&rdquo;&nbsp; I admitted to him that
+if he could believe in hell-fire, or if he could proclaim the Second
+Advent, as Paul did to the Thessalonians, and get people to believe,
+he might change their manners, but otherwise he could do nothing but
+resort to a much slower process.&nbsp; With the departure of a belief
+in the supernatural departs once and for ever the chance of regenerating
+the race except by the school and by science. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a>&nbsp;
+However, M&rsquo;Kay thought he would try.&nbsp; His earnestness was
+rather a hindrance than a help to him, for it prevented his putting
+certain important questions to himself, or at any rate it prevented
+his waiting for distinct answers.&nbsp; He recurred to the apostles
+and Bunyan, and was convinced that it was possible even now to touch
+depraved men and women with an idea which should recast their lives.&nbsp;
+So it is that the main obstacle to our success is a success which has
+preceded us.&nbsp; We instinctively follow the antecedent form, and
+consequently we either pass by, or deny altogether, the life of our
+own time, because its expression has changed.&nbsp; We never do practically
+believe that the Messiah is not incarnated twice in the same flesh.&nbsp;
+He came as Jesus, and we look for Him as Jesus now, overlooking the
+manifestation of to-day, and dying, perhaps, without recognising it.<br>
+<br>
+M&rsquo;Kay had found a room near Parker Street, Drury Lane, in which
+he proposed to begin, and that night, as we trod the pavement of Portland
+Place, he propounded his plans to me, I listening without much confidence,
+but loth nevertheless to take the office of Time upon myself, and to
+disprove what experience would disprove more effectually.&nbsp; His
+object was nothing less than gradually to attract Drury Lane to come
+and be saved.<br>
+<br>
+The first Sunday I went with him to the room.&nbsp; As we walked over
+the Drury Lane gratings of the cellars a most foul stench came up, and
+one in particular I remember to this day.&nbsp; A man half dressed pushed
+open a broken window beneath us, just as we passed by, and there issued
+such a blast of corruption, made up of gases bred by filth, air breathed
+and rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours of unnameable personal
+uncleanness and disease, that I staggered to the gutter with a qualm
+which I could scarcely conquer.&nbsp; At the doors of the houses stood
+grimy women with their arms folded and their hair disordered.&nbsp;
+Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope to broken railings, and were
+swinging on it.&nbsp; The common door to a score of lodgings stood ever
+open, and the children swarmed up and down the stairs carrying with
+them patches of mud every time they came in from the street.&nbsp; The
+wholesome practice which amongst the decent poor marks off at least
+one day in the week as a day on which there is to be a change; when
+there is to be some attempt to procure order and cleanliness; a day
+to be preceded by soap and water, by shaving, and by as many clean clothes
+as can be procured, was unknown here.&nbsp; There was no break in the
+uniformity of squalor; nor was it even possible for any single family
+to emerge amidst such altogether suppressive surroundings.&nbsp; All
+self-respect, all effort to do anything more than to satisfy somehow
+the grossest wants, had departed.&nbsp; The shops were open; most of
+them exhibiting a most miscellaneous collection of goods, such as bacon
+cut in slices, fire-wood, a few loaves of bread, and sweetmeats in dirty
+bottles.&nbsp; Fowls, strange to say, black as the flagstones, walked
+in and out of these shops, or descended into the dark areas.&nbsp; The
+undertaker had not put up his shutters.&nbsp; He had drawn down a yellow
+blind, on which was painted a picture of a suburban cemetery.&nbsp;
+Two funerals, the loftiest effort of his craft, were depicted approaching
+the gates.&nbsp; When the gas was alight behind the blind, an effect
+was produced which was doubtless much admired.&nbsp; He also displayed
+in his window a model coffin, a work of art.&nbsp; It was about a foot
+long, varnished, studded with little brass nails, and on the lid was
+fastened a rustic cross stretching from end to end.&nbsp; The desire
+to decorate existence in some way or other with more or less care is
+nearly universal.&nbsp; The most sensual and the meanest almost always
+manifest an indisposition to be content with mere material satisfaction.&nbsp;
+I have known selfish, gluttonous, drunken men spend their leisure moments
+in trimming a bed of scarlet geraniums, and the vulgarest and most commonplace
+of mortals considers it a necessity to put a picture in the room or
+an ornament on the mantelpiece.&nbsp; The instinct, even in its lowest
+forms, is divine.&nbsp; It is the commentary on the text that man shall
+not live by bread alone.&nbsp; It is evidence of an acknowledged compulsion
+- of which art is the highest manifestation - to <i>escape</i>.&nbsp;
+In the alleys behind Drury Lane this instinct, the very salt of life,
+was dead, crushed out utterly, a symptom which seemed to me ominous,
+and even awful to the last degree.&nbsp; The only house in which it
+survived was in that of the undertaker, who displayed the willows, the
+black horses, and the coffin.&nbsp; These may have been nothing more
+than an advertisement, but from the care with which the cross was elaborated,
+and the neatness with which it was made to resemble a natural piece
+of wood, I am inclined to believe that the man felt some pleasure in
+his work for its own sake, and that he was not utterly submerged.&nbsp;
+The cross in such dens as these, or, worse than dens, in such sewers!&nbsp;
+If it be anything, it is a symbol of victory, of power to triumph over
+resistance, and even death.&nbsp; Here was nothing but sullen subjugation,
+the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only by a tendency to mutiny.&nbsp;
+Here was a strength of circumstance to quell and dominate which neither
+Jesus nor Paul could have overcome - worse a thousandfold than Scribes
+or Pharisees, or any form of persecution.&nbsp; The preaching of Jesus
+would have been powerless here; in fact, no known stimulus, nothing
+ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can do anything
+in the back streets of great cities so long as they are the cesspools
+which they are now.<br>
+<br>
+We came to the room.&nbsp; About a score of M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s own
+friends were there, and perhaps half-a-dozen outsiders, attracted by
+the notice which had been pasted on a board at the entrance.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay
+announced his errand.&nbsp; The ignorance and misery of London he said
+were intolerable to him.&nbsp; He could not take any pleasure in life
+when he thought upon them.&nbsp; What could he do? that was the question.&nbsp;
+He was not a man of wealth.&nbsp; He could not buy up these hovels.&nbsp;
+He could not force an entrance into them and persuade their inhabitants
+to improve themselves.&nbsp; He had no talents wherewith to found a
+great organisation or create public opinion.&nbsp; He had determined,
+after much thought, to do what he was now doing.&nbsp; It was very little,
+but it was all he could undertake.&nbsp; He proposed to keep this room
+open as a place to which those who wished might resort at different
+times, and find some quietude, instruction, and what fortifying thoughts
+he could collect to enable men to endure their almost unendurable sufferings.&nbsp;
+He did not intend to teach theology.&nbsp; Anything which would be serviceable
+he would set forth, but in the main he intended to rely on holding up
+the examples of those who were greater than ourselves and were our redeemers.&nbsp;
+He meant to teach Christ in the proper sense of the word.&nbsp; Christ
+now is admired probably more than He had ever been.&nbsp; Everybody
+agrees to admire Him, but where are the people who really do what He
+did?&nbsp; There is no religion now-a-days.&nbsp; Religion is a mere
+literature.&nbsp; Cultivated persons sit in their studies and write
+overflowingly about Jesus, or meet at parties and talk about Him; but
+He is not of much use to me unless I say to myself, <i>how is it with
+thee</i>? unless I myself become what He was.&nbsp; This was the meaning
+of Jesus to the Apostle Paul.&nbsp; Jesus was in him; he had put on
+Jesus; that is to say, Jesus lived in him like a second soul, taking
+the place of his own soul and directing him accordingly.&nbsp; That
+was religion, and it is absurd to say that the English nation at this
+moment, or any section of it, is religious.&nbsp; Its educated classes
+are inhabited by a hundred minds.&nbsp; We are in a state of anarchy,
+each of us with a different aim and shaping himself according to a different
+type; while the uneducated classes are entirely given over to the &ldquo;natural
+man.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was firmly persuaded that we need religion, poor
+and rich alike.&nbsp; We need some controlling influence to bind together
+our scattered energies.&nbsp; We do not know what we are doing.&nbsp;
+We read one book one day and another book another day, but it is idle
+wandering to right and left; it is not advancing on a straight road.&nbsp;
+It is not possible to bind ourselves down to a certain defined course,
+but still it is an enormous, an incalculable advantage for us to have
+some irreversible standard set up in us by which everything we meet
+is to be judged.&nbsp; That is the meaning of the prophecy - whether
+it will ever be fulfilled God only knows - that Christ shall judge the
+world.&nbsp; All religions have been this.&nbsp; They have said that
+in the midst of the infinitely possible - infinitely possible evil and
+infinitely possible good too - we become distracted.&nbsp; A thousand
+forces good and bad act upon us.&nbsp; It is necessary, if we are to
+be men, if we are to be saved, that we should be rescued from this tumult,
+and that our feet should be planted upon a path.&nbsp; His object, therefore,
+would be to preach Christ, as before said, and to introduce into human
+life His unifying influence.&nbsp; He would try and get them to see
+things with the eyes of Christ, to love with His love, to judge with
+His judgment.&nbsp; He believed Christ was fitted to occupy this place.&nbsp;
+He deliberately chose Christ as worthy to be our central, shaping force.&nbsp;
+He would try by degrees to prove this; to prove that Christ&rsquo;s
+way of dealing with life is the best way, and so to create a genuinely
+Christian spirit, which, when any choice of conduct is presented to
+us, will prompt us to ask first of all, <i>how would Christ have it</i>?
+or, when men and things pass before us, will decide through him what
+we have to say about them.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay added that he hoped his
+efforts would not be confined to talking.&nbsp; He trusted to be able,
+by means of this little meeting, gradually to gain admittance for himself
+and his friends into the houses of the poor and do some practical good.&nbsp;
+At present he had no organisation and no plans.&nbsp; He did not believe
+in organisation and plans preceding a clear conception of what was to
+be accomplished.&nbsp; Such, as nearly as I can now recollect, is an
+outline of his discourse.&nbsp; It was thoroughly characteristic of
+him.&nbsp; He always talked in this fashion.&nbsp; He was for ever insisting
+on the aimlessness of modern life, on the powerlessness of its vague
+activities to mould men into anything good, to restrain them from evil
+or moderate their passions, and he was possessed by a vision of a new
+Christianity which was to take the place of the old and dead theologies.&nbsp;
+I have reported him in my own language.&nbsp; He strove as much as he
+could to make his meaning plain to everybody.&nbsp; Just before he finished,
+three or four out of the half-a-dozen outsiders who were present whistled
+with all their might and ran down the stairs shouting to one another.&nbsp;
+As we went out they had collected about the door, and amused themselves
+by pushing one another against us, and kicking an old kettle behind
+us and amongst us all the way up the street, so that we were covered
+with splashes.&nbsp; Mrs. M&rsquo;Kay went with us, and when we reached
+home, she tried to say something about what she had heard.&nbsp; The
+cloud came over her husband&rsquo;s face at once; he remained silent
+for a minute, and getting up and going to the window, observed that
+it ought to be cleaned, and that he could hardly see the opposite house.&nbsp;
+The poor woman looked distressed, and I was just about to come to her
+rescue by continuing what she had been saying, when she rose, not in
+anger, but in trouble, and went upstairs.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER III - MISS LEROY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+During the great French war there were many French prisoners in my native
+town.&nbsp; They led a strange isolated life, for they knew nothing
+of our language, nor, in those days, did three people in the town understand
+theirs.&nbsp; The common soldiers amused themselves by making little
+trifles and selling them.&nbsp; I have now before me a box of coloured
+straw with the date 1799 on the bottom, which was bought by my grandfather.&nbsp;
+One of these prisoners was an officer named Leroy.&nbsp; Why he did
+not go back to France I never heard, but I know that before I was born
+he was living near our house on a small income; that he tried to teach
+French, and that he had as his companion a handsome daughter who grew
+up speaking English.&nbsp; What she was like when she was young I cannot
+say, but I have had her described to me over and over again.&nbsp; She
+had rather darkish brown hair, and she was tall and straight as an arrow.&nbsp;
+This she was, by the way, even into old age.&nbsp; She surprised, shocked,
+and attracted all the sober persons in our circle.&nbsp; Her ways were
+not their ways.&nbsp; She would walk out by herself on a starry night
+without a single companion, and cause thereby infinite talk, which would
+have converged to a single focus if it had not happened that she was
+also in the habit of walking out at four o&rsquo;clock on a summer&rsquo;s
+morning, and that in the church porch of a little village not far from
+us, which was her favourite resting-place, a copy of the <i>De Imitatione
+Christi </i>was found which belonged to her.&nbsp; So the talk was scattered
+again and its convergence prevented.&nbsp; She used to say doubtful
+things about love.&nbsp; One of them struck my mother with horror.&nbsp;
+Miss Leroy told a male person once, and told him to his face, that if
+she loved him and he loved her, and they agreed to sign one another&rsquo;s
+foreheads with a cross as a ceremony, it would be as good to her as
+marriage.&nbsp; This may seem a trifle, but nobody now can imagine what
+was thought of it at the time it was spoken.&nbsp; My mother repeated
+it every now and then for fifty years.&nbsp; It may be conjectured how
+easily any other girls of our acquaintance would have been classified,
+and justly classified, if they had uttered such barefaced Continental
+immorality.&nbsp; Miss Leroy&rsquo;s neighbours were remarkably apt
+at classifying their fellow-creatures.&nbsp; They had a few, a very
+few holes, into which they dropped their neighbours, and they must go
+into one or the other.&nbsp; Nothing was more distressing than a specimen
+which, notwithstanding all the violence which might be used to it, would
+not fit into a hole, but remained an exception.&nbsp; Some lout, I believe,
+reckoning on the legitimacy of his generalisation, and having heard
+of this and other observations accredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to
+be slightly rude to her.&nbsp; What she said to him was never known,
+but he was always shy afterwards of mentioning her name, and when he
+did he was wont to declare that she was &ldquo;a rum un.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+She was not particular, I have heard, about personal tidiness, and this
+I can well believe, for she was certainly not distinguished when I knew
+her for this virtue.&nbsp; She cared nothing for the linen-closet, the
+spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker, which were the true household
+gods of the respectable women of those days.&nbsp; She would have been
+instantly set down as &ldquo;slut,&rdquo; and as having &ldquo;nasty
+dirty forrin ways,&rdquo; if a peculiar habit of hers had not unfortunately
+presented itself, most irritating to her critics, so anxious promptly
+to gratify their philosophic tendency towards scientific grouping.&nbsp;
+Mrs. Mobbs, who lived next door to her, averred that she always slept
+with the window open.&nbsp; Mrs. Mobbs, like everybody else, never opened
+her window except to &ldquo;air the room.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mrs. Mobbs&rsquo;
+best bedroom was carpeted all over, and contained a great four-post
+bedstead, hung round with heavy hangings, and protected at the top from
+draughts by a kind of firmament of white dimity.&nbsp; Mrs. Mobbs stuffed
+a sack of straw up the chimney of the fireplace, to prevent the fall
+of the &ldquo;sutt,&rdquo; as she called it.&nbsp; Mrs. Mobbs, if she
+had a visitor, gave her a hot supper, and expected her immediately afterwards
+to go upstairs, draw the window curtains, get into this bed, draw the
+bed curtains also, and wake up the next morning &ldquo;bilious.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This was the proper thing to do.&nbsp; Miss Leroy&rsquo;s sitting-room
+was decidedly disorderly; the chairs were dusty; &ldquo;yer might write
+yer name on the table,&rdquo; Mrs. Mobbs declared; but, nevertheless,
+the casement was never closed night nor day; and, moreover, Miss Leroy
+was believed by the strongest circumstantial evidence to wash herself
+all over every morning, a habit which Mrs. Mobbs thought &ldquo;weakening,&rdquo;
+and somehow connected with ethical impropriety.&nbsp; When Miss Leroy
+was married, and first as an elderly woman became known to me, she was
+very inconsequential in her opinions, or at least appeared so to our
+eyes.&nbsp; She must have been much more so when she was younger.&nbsp;
+In our town we were all formed upon recognised patterns, and those who
+possessed any one mark of the pattern, had all.&nbsp; The wine-merchant,
+for example, who went to church, eminently respectable, Tory, by no
+means associating with the tradesfolk who displayed their goods in the
+windows, knowing no &ldquo;experience,&rdquo; and who had never felt
+the outpouring of the Spirit, was a specimen of a class like him.&nbsp;
+Another class was represented by the dissenting ironmonger, deacon,
+presiding at prayer-meetings, strict Sabbatarian, and believer in eternal
+punishments; while a third was set forth by &ldquo;Guffy,&rdquo; whose
+real name was unknown, who got drunk, unloaded barges, assisted at the
+municipal elections, and was never once seen inside a place of worship.&nbsp;
+These patterns had existed amongst us from the dimmest antiquity, and
+were accepted as part of the eternal order of things; so much so, that
+the deacon, although he professed to be sure that nobody who had not
+been converted would escape the fire - and the wine-merchant certainly
+had not been converted - was very far from admitting to himself that
+the wine-merchant ought to be converted, or that it would be proper
+to try and convert him.&nbsp; I doubt, indeed, whether our congregation
+would have been happy, or would have thought any the better of him,
+if he had left the church.&nbsp; Such an event, however, could no more
+come within the reach of our vision than a reversal of the current of
+our river.&nbsp; It would have broken up our foundations and party-walls,
+and would have been considered as ominous, and anything but a subject
+for thankfulness.&nbsp; But Miss Leroy was not the wine-merchant, nor
+the ironmonger, nor Guffy, and even now I cannot trace the hidden centre
+of union from which sprang so much that was apparently irreconcilable.&nbsp;
+She was a person whom nobody could have created in writing a novel,
+because she was so inconsistent.&nbsp; As I have said before, she studied
+Thomas &agrave; Kempis, and her little French Bible was brown with constant
+use.&nbsp; But then she read much fiction in which there were scenes
+which would have made our hair stand on end.&nbsp; The only thing she
+constantly abhorred in books was what was dull and opaque.&nbsp; Yet,
+as we shall see presently, her dislike to dulness, once at least in
+her life, notably failed her.&nbsp; She was not Catholic, and professed
+herself Protestant, but such a Protestantism!&nbsp; She had no sceptical
+doubts.&nbsp; She believed implicitly that the Bible was the Word of
+God, and that everything in it was true, but her interpretation of it
+was of the strangest kind.&nbsp; Almost all our great doctrines seemed
+shrunk to nothing in her eyes, while others, which were nothing to us,
+were all-important to her.&nbsp; The atonement, for instance, I never
+heard her mention, but Unitarianism was hateful to her, and Jesus was
+her God in every sense of the word.&nbsp; On the other hand, she was
+partly Pagan, for she knew very little of that consideration for the
+feeble, and even for the foolish, which is the glory of Christianity.&nbsp;
+She was rude to foolish people, and she instinctively kept out of the
+way of all disease and weakness, so that in this respect she was far
+below the commonplace tradesman&rsquo;s wife, who visited the sick,
+sat up with them, and, in fact, never seemed so completely in her element
+as when she could be with anybody who was ill in bed.<br>
+<br>
+Miss Leroy&rsquo;s father was republican, and so was my grandfather.&nbsp;
+My grandfather and old Leroy were the only people in our town who refused
+to illuminate when a victory was gained over the French.&nbsp; Leroy&rsquo;s
+windows were spared on the ground that he was not a Briton, but the
+mob endeavoured to show my grandfather the folly of his belief in democracy
+by smashing every pane of glass in front of his house with stones.&nbsp;
+This drew him and Leroy together, and the result was, that although
+Leroy himself never set foot inside any chapel or church, Miss Leroy
+was often induced to attend our meeting-house in company with a maiden
+aunt of mine, who rather &ldquo;took to her.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now comes
+the for ever mysterious passage in history.&nbsp; There was amongst
+the attendants at that meeting-house a young man who was apprentice
+to a miller.&nbsp; He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth,
+very good, but nothing more.&nbsp; He wore on Sunday a complete suit
+of light pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salt
+on Sunday all his life.&nbsp; He taught in the Sunday-school, and afterwards,
+as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a prayer-meeting,
+and to &ldquo;take the service&rdquo; in the village chapels on Sunday
+evening.&nbsp; He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered person
+I ever knew.&nbsp; I first became acquainted with him when I was a child
+and he was past middle life.&nbsp; What he was then, I am told, he always
+was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word escape his
+lips.&nbsp; His habits, even when young, had a tendency to harden.&nbsp;
+He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatest regularity,
+and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after dark.&nbsp;
+I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying with his
+family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the confusion
+of all who were around him.&nbsp; He is dead now, but he lived to a
+good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and he passed
+away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze.&nbsp; He never
+read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not at work
+or at chapel he slumbered.&nbsp; To the utter amazement of everybody,
+it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he - George Butts
+- were to be married.&nbsp; They were about the last people in the world,
+who, it was thought, could be brought together.&nbsp; My mother was
+stunned, and never completely recovered.&nbsp; I have seen her, forty
+years after George Butts&rsquo; wedding-day, lift up her hands, and
+have heard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were
+of yesterday, &ldquo;What made that girl have George I can <i>not </i>think
+- but there!&rdquo;&nbsp; What she meant by the last two words we could
+not comprehend.&nbsp; Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to
+mean that she knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they
+were mistaken.&nbsp; I am quite certain if she had known anything she
+must have told it, and, in the next place, the phrase &ldquo;but there&rdquo;
+was not uncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark
+the consciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give an explanation
+of mysterious phenomena in human relationships.&nbsp; For my own part,
+I am just as much in the dark as my mother.&nbsp; My father, who was
+a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle.&nbsp;
+He used to say that he never thought George could have &ldquo;made up&rdquo;
+to any young woman, and it was quite clear that Miss Leroy did not either
+then or afterwards display any violent affection for him.&nbsp; I have
+heard her criticise and patronise him as a &ldquo;good soul,&rdquo;
+but incapable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her.&nbsp; After
+marriage she went her way and he his.&nbsp; She got up early, as she
+was wont to do, and took her Bible into the fields while he was snoring.&nbsp;
+She would then very likely suffer from a terrible headache during the
+rest of the day, and lie down for hours, letting the house manage itself
+as best it could.&nbsp; What made her selection of George more obscure
+was that she was much admired by many young fellows, some of whom were
+certainly more akin to her than he was; and I have heard from one or
+two reports of encouraging words, and even something more than words,
+which she had vouchsafed to them.&nbsp; A solution is impossible.&nbsp;
+The affinities, repulsions, reasons in a nature like that of Miss Leroy&rsquo;s
+are so secret and so subtle, working towards such incalculable and not-to-be-predicted
+results, that to attempt to make a major and minor premiss and an inevitable
+conclusion out of them would be useless.&nbsp; One thing was clear,
+that by marrying George she gained great freedom.&nbsp; If she had married
+anybody closer to her, she might have jarred with him; there might have
+been collision and wreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed;
+for she was not the kind of person to accommodate herself to others
+even in the matter of small differences.&nbsp; But George&rsquo;s road
+through space lay entirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest
+chance of interference.&nbsp; She was under the protection of a husband;
+she could do things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign
+land, she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small.&nbsp;
+This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give.&nbsp; She
+went regularly all her life to chapel with George, but even when he
+became deacon, and &ldquo;supplied&rdquo; the villages round, she never
+would join the church as a member.&nbsp; She never agreed with the minister,
+and he never could make anything out of her.&nbsp; They did not quarrel,
+but she thought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed and uncomfortable
+in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond to any dogmatic
+statement of the articles of religion, and who yet could not be put
+aside as &ldquo;one of those in the gallery&rdquo; - that is to say,
+as one of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns with
+amazing fervour, and she quoted them to him with a freedom and a certain
+superiority which he might have expected from an aged brother minister,
+but certainly not from one of his own congregation.&nbsp; He was a preacher
+of the Gospel, it was true; and it was his duty, a duty on which he
+insisted, to be &ldquo;instant in season and out of season&rdquo; in
+saying spiritual things to his flock; but then they were things proper,
+decent, conventional, uttered with gravity at suitable times - such
+as were customary amongst all the ministers of the denomination.&nbsp;
+It was not pleasant to be outbid in his own department, especially by
+one who was not a communicant, and to be obliged, when he went on a
+pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. Butts happened to be, to sit
+still and hear her, regardless of the minister&rsquo;s presence, conclude
+a short mystical monologue with Cowper&rsquo;s verse -<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Exults our rising soul,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Disburdened of her load,<br>
+And swells unutterably full<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of glory and of God.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+This was <i>not </i>pleasant to our minister, nor was it pleasant to
+the minister&rsquo;s wife.&nbsp; But George Butts held a responsible
+position in our community, and the minister&rsquo;s wife held also a
+responsible position, so that she taxed all her ingenuity to let her
+friends understand at tea-parties what she thought of Mrs. Butts without
+saying anything which could be the ground of formal remonstrance.&nbsp;
+Thus did Mrs. Butts live among us, as an Arabian bird with its peculiar
+habits, cries, and plumage might live in one of our barn-yards with
+the ordinary barn-door fowls.<br>
+<br>
+I was never happier when I was a boy than when I was with Mrs. Butts
+at the mill, which George had inherited.&nbsp; There was a grand freedom
+in her house.&nbsp; The front door leading into the garden was always
+open.&nbsp; There was no precise separation between the house and the
+mill.&nbsp; The business and the dwelling-place were mixed up together,
+and covered with flour.&nbsp; Mr. Butts was in the habit of walking
+out of his mill into the living-room every now and then, and never dreamed
+when one o&rsquo;clock came that it was necessary for him to change
+his floury coat before he had his dinner.&nbsp; His cap he also often
+retained, and in any weather, not extraordinarily cold, he sat in his
+shirtsleeves.&nbsp; The garden was large and half-wild.&nbsp; A man
+from the mill, if work was slack, gave a day to it now and then, but
+it was not trimmed and raked and combed like the other gardens in the
+town.&nbsp; It was full of gooseberry trees, and I was permitted to
+eat the gooseberries without stint.&nbsp; The mill-life, too, was inexpressibly
+attractive - the dark chamber with the great, green, dripping wheel
+in it, so awfully mysterious as the central life of the whole structure;
+the machinery connected with the wheel - I knew not how; the hole where
+the roach lay by the side of the mill-tail in the eddy; the haunts of
+the water-rats which we used to hunt with Spot, the black and tan terrier,
+and the still more exciting sport with the ferrets - all this drew me
+down the lane perpetually.&nbsp; I liked, and even loved Mrs. Butts,
+too, for her own sake.&nbsp; Her kindness to me was unlimited, and she
+was never overcome with the fear of &ldquo;spoiling me,&rdquo; which
+seemed the constant dread of most of my hostesses.&nbsp; I never lost
+my love for her.&nbsp; It grew as I grew, despite my mother&rsquo;s
+scarcely suppressed hostility to her, and when I heard she was ill,
+and was likely to die, I went to be with her.&nbsp; She was eighty years
+old then.&nbsp; I sat by her bedside with her hand in mine.&nbsp; I
+was there when she passed away, and - but I have no mind and no power
+to say any more, for all the memories of her affection and of the sunny
+days by the water come over me and prevent the calmness necessary for
+a chronicle.&nbsp; She with all her faults and eccentricities will always
+have in my heart a little chapel with an ever-burning light.&nbsp; She
+was one of the very very few whom I have ever seen who knew how to love
+a child.<br>
+<br>
+Mrs. Butts and George had one son who was named Clement.&nbsp; He was
+exactly my own age, and naturally we were constant companions.&nbsp;
+We went to the same school.&nbsp; He never distinguished himself at
+his books, but he was chief among us.&nbsp; He had a versatile talent
+for almost every accomplishment in which we delighted, but he was not
+supreme in any one of them.&nbsp; There were better cricketers, better
+football players, better hands at setting a night-line, better swimmers
+than Clem, but he could do something, and do it well, in all these departments.&nbsp;
+He generally took up a thing with much eagerness for a time, and then
+let it drop.&nbsp; He was foremost in introducing new games and new
+fashions, which he permitted to flourish for a time, and then superseded.&nbsp;
+As he grew up he displayed a taste for drawing and music.&nbsp; He was
+soon able to copy little paintings of flowers, or even little country
+scenes, and to play a piece of no very great difficulty with tolerable
+effect.&nbsp; But as he never was taught by a master, and never practised
+elementary exercises and studies, he was deficient in accuracy.&nbsp;
+When the question came what was to be done with him after he left school,
+his father naturally wished him to go into the mill.&nbsp; Clem, however,
+set his face steadily against this project, and his mother, who was
+a believer in his genius, supported him.&nbsp; He actually wanted to
+go to the University, a thing unheard of in those days amongst our people;
+but this was not possible, and after dangling about for some time at
+home, he obtained the post of usher in a school, an occupation which
+he considered more congenial and intellectual than that of grinding
+flour.&nbsp; Strange to say, although he knew less than any of his colleagues,
+he succeeded better than any of them.&nbsp; He managed to impress a
+sense of his own importance upon everybody, including the headmaster.&nbsp;
+He slid into a position of superiority. above three or four colleagues
+who would have shamed him at an examination, and who uttered many a
+curse because they saw themselves surpassed and put in the shade by
+a stranger, who, they were confident, could hardly construct a hexameter.&nbsp;
+He never quarrelled with them nor did he grossly patronise them, but
+he always let them know that he considered himself above them.&nbsp;
+His reading was desultory; in fact, everything he did was desultory.&nbsp;
+He was not selfish in the ordinary sense of the word.&nbsp; Rather was
+he distinguished by a large and liberal open-handedness; but he was
+liberal also to himself to a remarkable degree, dressing himself expensively,
+and spending a good deal of money in luxuries.&nbsp; He was specially
+fond of insisting on his half French origin, made a great deal of his
+mother, was silent as to his father, and always signed himself C. Leroy
+Butts, although I don&rsquo;t believe the second Christian name was
+given him in baptism.&nbsp; Notwithstanding his generosity he was egotistical
+and hollow at heart.&nbsp; He knew nothing of friendship in the best
+sense of the word, but had a multitude of acquaintances, whom he invariably
+sought amongst those who were better off than himself.&nbsp; He was
+popular with them, for no man knew better than he how to get up an entertainment,
+or to make a success of an evening party.&nbsp; He had not been at his
+school for two years before he conceived the notion of setting up for
+himself.&nbsp; He had not a penny, but he borrowed easily what was wanted
+from somebody he knew, and in a twelvemonth more he had a dozen pupils.&nbsp;
+He took care to get the ablest subordinates he could find, and he succeeded
+in passing a boy for an open scholarship at Oxford, against two competitors
+prepared by the very man whom he had formerly served.&nbsp; After this
+he prospered greatly, and would have prospered still more, if his love
+of show and extravagance had not increased with his income.&nbsp; His
+talents were sometimes taxed when people who came to place their sons
+with him supposed ignorantly that his origin and attainments were what
+might be expected from his position; and poor Chalmers, a Glasgow M.A.,
+who still taught, for &pound;80 a year, the third class in the establishment
+in which Butts began life, had some bitter stories on that subject.&nbsp;
+Chalmers was a perfect scholar, but he was not agreeable.&nbsp; He had
+black finger-nails, and wore dirty collars.&nbsp; Having a lively remembrance
+of his friend&rsquo;s &ldquo;general acquaintance&rdquo; with Latin
+prosody, Chalmers&rsquo; opinion of Providence was much modified when
+he discovered what Providence was doing for Butts.&nbsp; Clem took to
+the Church when he started for himself.&nbsp; It would have been madness
+in him to remain a Dissenter.&nbsp; But in private, if it suited his
+purpose, he could always be airily sceptical, and he had a superficial
+acquaintance, second-hand, with a multitude of books, many of them of
+an infidel turn.&nbsp; I once rebuked him for his hypocrisy, and his
+defence was that religious disputes were indifferent to him, and that
+at any rate a man associates with gentlemen if he is a churchman.&nbsp;
+Cultivation and manners he thought to be of more importance than Calvinism.&nbsp;
+I believe that he partly meant what he said.&nbsp; He went to church
+because the school would have failed if he had gone to chapel; but he
+was sufficiently keen-sighted and clever to be beyond the petty quarrels
+of the sects, and a song well sung was of much greater moment to him
+than an essay on p&aelig;do-baptism.&nbsp; It was all very well of Chalmers
+to revile him for his shallowness.&nbsp; He was shallow, and yet he
+possessed in some mysterious way a talent which I greatly coveted, and
+which in this world is inestimably precious - the talent of making people
+give way before him - a capacity of self-impression.&nbsp; Chalmers
+could never have commanded anybody.&nbsp; He had no power whatever,
+even when he was right, to put his will against the wills of others,
+but yielded first this way and then the other.&nbsp; Clem, on the contrary,
+without any difficulty or any effort, could conquer all opposition,
+and smilingly force everybody to do his bidding.<br>
+<br>
+Clem had a peculiar theory with regard to his own rights and those of
+the class to which he considered that he belonged.&nbsp; He always held
+implicitly and sometimes explicitly that gifted people live under a
+kind of dispensation of grace; the law existing solely for dull souls.&nbsp;
+What in a clown is a crime punishable by the laws of the land might
+in a man of genius be a necessary development, or at any rate an excusable
+offence.&nbsp; He had nothing to say for the servant-girl who had sinned
+with the shopman, but if artist or poet were to carry off another man&rsquo;s
+wife, it might not be wrong.<br>
+<br>
+He believed, and acted upon the belief, that the inferior ought to render
+perpetual incense to the superior, and that the superior should receive
+it as a matter of course.&nbsp; When his father was ill he never waited
+on him or sat up a single night with him.&nbsp; If duty was disagreeable
+to him Clem paid homage to it afar off, but pleaded exemption.&nbsp;
+He admitted that waiting on the sick is obligatory on people who are
+fitted for it, and is very charming.&nbsp; Nothing was more beautiful
+to him than tender, filial care spending itself for a beloved object.&nbsp;
+But it was not his vocation.&nbsp; His nerves were more finely ordered
+than those of mankind generally, and the sight of disease and suffering
+distressed him too much.&nbsp; Everything was surrendered to him in
+the houses of his friends.&nbsp; If any inconvenience was to be endured,
+he was the first person to be protected from it, and he accepted the
+greatest sacrifices, with a graceful acknowledgment, it is true, but
+with no repulse.&nbsp; To what better purpose could the best wine be
+put than in cherishing his imagination.&nbsp; It was simple waste to
+allow it to be poured out upon the earth, and to give it to a fool was
+no better.&nbsp; After he succeeded so well in the world, Clem, to a
+great extent, deserted me, although I was his oldest friend and the
+friend of his childhood.&nbsp; I heard that he visited a good many rich
+persons, that he made much of them, and they made much of him.&nbsp;
+He kept up a kind of acquaintance with me, not by writing to me, but
+by the very cheap mode of sending me a newspaper now and then with a
+marked paragraph in it announcing the exploits of his school at a cricket-match,
+or occasionally with a report of a lecture which he had delivered.&nbsp;
+He was a decent orator, and from motives of business if from no other,
+he not unfrequently spoke in public.&nbsp; One or two of these lectures
+wounded me a good deal.&nbsp; There was one in particular on <i>As You
+Like It, </i>in which he held up to admiration the fidelity which is
+so remarkable in Shakespeare, and lamented that in these days it was
+so rare to find anything of the kind, he thought that we were becoming
+more indifferent to one another.&nbsp; He maintained, however, that
+man should be everything to man, and he then enlarged on the duty of
+really cultivating affection, of its superiority to books, and on the
+pleasure and profit of self-denial.&nbsp; I do not mean to accuse Clem
+of downright hypocrisy.&nbsp; I have known many persons come up from
+the country and go into raptures over a playhouse sun and moon who have
+never bestowed a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to be
+seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means follows
+because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised,
+uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we can step over
+the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining
+endurance of the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa there.&nbsp;
+I was annoyed with myself because Clem&rsquo;s abandonment of me so
+much affected me.&nbsp; I wished I could cut the rope and carelessly
+cast him adrift as he had cast me adrift, but I could not.&nbsp; I never
+could make out and cannot make out what was the secret of his influence
+over me; why I was unable to say, &ldquo;If you do not care for me I
+do not care for you.&rdquo;&nbsp; I longed sometimes for complete rupture,
+so that we might know exactly where we were, but it never came.&nbsp;
+Gradually our intercourse grew thinner and thinner, until at last I
+heard that he had been spending a fortnight with some semi-aristocratic
+acquaintance within five miles of me, and during the whole of that time
+he never came near me.&nbsp; I met him in a railway station soon afterwards,
+when he came up to me effusive and apparently affectionate.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+was a real grief to me, my dear fellow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that
+I could not call on you last month, but the truth was I was so driven:
+they would make me go here and go there, and I kept putting off my visit
+to you till it was too late.&rdquo;&nbsp; Fortunately my train was just
+starting, or I don&rsquo;t know what might have happened.&nbsp; I said
+not a word; shook hands with him; got into the carriage; he waved his
+hat to me, and I pretended not to see him, but I did see him, and saw
+him turn round immediately to some well-dressed officer-like gentleman
+with whom he walked laughing down the platform.&nbsp; The rest of that
+day was black to me.&nbsp; I cared for nothing.&nbsp; I passed away
+from the thought of Clem, and dwelt upon the conviction which had long
+possessed me that I was <i>insignificant, </i>that there was <i>nothing
+much in me, </i>and it was this which destroyed my peace.&nbsp; We may
+reconcile ourselves to poverty and suffering, but few of us can endure
+the conviction that there is <i>nothing in us, </i>and that consequently
+we cannot expect anybody to gravitate towards us with any forceful impulse.&nbsp;
+It is a bitter experience.&nbsp; And yet there is consolation.&nbsp;
+The universe is infinite.&nbsp; In the presence of its celestial magnitudes
+who is there who is really great or small, and what is the difference
+between you and me, my work and yours?&nbsp; I sought refuge in the
+idea of GOD, the God of a starry night with its incomprehensible distances;
+and I was at peace, content to be the meanest worm of all the millions
+that crawl on the earth.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER IV - A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The few friends who have read the first part of my autobiography may
+perhaps remember that in my younger days I had engaged myself to a girl
+named Ellen, from whom afterwards I parted.&nbsp; After some two or
+three years she was left an orphan, and came into the possession of
+a small property, over which unfortunately she had complete power.&nbsp;
+She was attractive and well-educated, and I heard long after I had broken
+with her, and had ceased to have intercourse with Butts, that the two
+were married.&nbsp; He of course, living so near her, had known her
+well, and he found her money useful.&nbsp; How they agreed I knew not
+save by report, but I was told that after the first child was born,
+the only child they ever had, Butts grew indifferent to her, and that
+she, to use my friend&rsquo;s expression, &ldquo;went off,&rdquo; by
+which I suppose he meant that she faded.&nbsp; There happened in those
+days to live near Butts a small squire, married, but with no family.&nbsp;
+He was a lethargic creature, about five-and-thirty years old, farming
+eight hundred acres of his own land.&nbsp; He did not, however, belong
+to the farming class.&nbsp; He had been to Harrow, was on the magistrates&rsquo;
+bench, and associated with the small aristocracy of the country round.&nbsp;
+He was like every other squire whom I remember in my native county,
+and I can remember scores of them.&nbsp; He read no books and tolerated
+the usual conventional breaches of the moral law, but was an intense
+worshipper of respectability, and hated a scandal.&nbsp; On one point
+he differed from his neighbours.&nbsp; He was a Whig and they were all
+Tories.&nbsp; I have said he read no books, and this, on the whole,
+is true, but nevertheless he did know something about the history of
+the early part of the century, and he was rather fond at political gatherings
+of making some allusion to Mr. Fox.&nbsp; His father had sat in the
+House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the French
+war.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t suppose that anybody not actually <i>in it</i>
+- no Londoner certainly - can understand the rigidity of the bonds which
+restricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know may
+restrict it now.&nbsp; There was with us one huge and dark exception
+to the general uniformity.&nbsp; The earl had broken loose, had ruined
+his estate, had defied decorum and openly lived with strange women at
+home and in Paris, but this black background did but set off the otherwise
+universal adhesion to the Church and to authorised manners, an adhesion
+tempered and rendered tolerable by port wine.&nbsp; It must not, however,
+be supposed that human nature was different from the human nature of
+to-day or a thousand years ago.&nbsp; There were then, even as there
+were a thousand years ago, and are to-day, small, secret doors, connected
+with mysterious staircases, by which access was gained to freedom; and
+men and women, inmates of castles with walls a yard thick, and impenetrable
+portcullises, sought those doors and descended those stairs night and
+day.&nbsp; But nobody knew, or if we did know, the silence was profound.&nbsp;
+The broad-shouldered, yellow-haired Whig squire, had a wife who was
+the opposite of him.&nbsp; She came from a distant part of the country,
+and had been educated in France.&nbsp; She was small, with black hair,
+and yet with blue eyes.&nbsp; She spoke French perfectly, was devoted
+to music, read French books, and, although she was a constant attendant
+at church, and gave no opportunity whatever for the slightest suspicion,
+the matrons of the circle in which she moved were never quite happy
+about her.&nbsp; This was due partly to her knowledge of French, and
+partly to her having no children.&nbsp; Anything more about her I do
+not know.&nbsp; She was beyond us, and although I have seen her often
+enough I never spoke to her.&nbsp; Butts, however, managed to become
+a visitor at the squire&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; Fancy <i>my </i>going to
+the squire&rsquo;s!&nbsp; But Butts did, was accepted there, and even
+dined there with a parson, and two or three half-pay officers.&nbsp;
+The squire never called on Butts.&nbsp; That was an understood thing,
+nor did Mrs. Butts accompany her husband.&nbsp; That also was an understood
+thing.&nbsp; It was strange that Butts could tolerate and even court
+such a relationship.&nbsp; Most men would scorn with the scorn of a
+personal insult an invitation to a house from which their wives were
+expressly excluded.&nbsp; The squire&rsquo;s lady and Clem became great
+friends.&nbsp; She discovered that his mother was a Frenchwoman, and
+this was a bond between them.&nbsp; She discovered also that Clem was
+artistic, that he was devotedly fond of music, that he could draw a
+little, paint a little, and she believed in the divine right of talent
+wherever it might be found to assert a claim of equality with those
+who were better born.&nbsp; The women in the country-side were shy of
+her; for the men she could not possibly care, and no doubt she must
+at times have got rather weary of her heavy husband with his one outlook
+towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig
+policy of 1802.&nbsp; I am under some disadvantage in telling this part
+of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards
+at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them
+from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken
+on any essential point.&nbsp; I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts
+must have become changed into what she was in later years.&nbsp; She
+had grown older since she and I had parted; she had seen trouble; her
+child had been born, and although she was not exactly estranged from
+Clem, for neither he nor she would have admitted any coolness, she had
+learned that she was nothing specially to him.&nbsp; I have often noticed
+what an imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in the balance of
+opposing forces, will alter the character.&nbsp; I have observed a woman,
+for example, essentially the same at twenty and thirty - who is there
+who is not always essentially the same? - and yet, what was a defect
+at twenty, has become transformed and transfigured into a benignant
+virtue at thirty; translating the whole nature from the human to the
+divine.&nbsp; Some slight depression has been wrought here, and some
+slight lift has been given there, and beauty and order have miraculously
+emerged from what was chaotic.&nbsp; The same thing may continually
+be noticed in the hereditary transmission of qualities.&nbsp; The redeeming
+virtue of the father palpably present in the son becomes his curse,
+through a faint diminution of the strength of the check which caused
+that virtue to be the father&rsquo;s salvation.&nbsp; The propensity,
+too, which is a man&rsquo;s evil genius, and leads him to madness and
+utter ruin, gives vivid reality to all his words and thoughts, and becomes
+all his strength, if by divine assistance it can just be subdued and
+prevented from rising in victorious insurrection.&nbsp; But this is
+a digression, useful, however, in its way, because it will explain Mrs.
+Butts when we come a little nearer to her in the future.<br>
+<br>
+For a time Clem&rsquo;s visits to the squire&rsquo;s house always took
+place when the squire was at home, but an amateur concert was to be
+arranged in which Clem was to take part together with the squire&rsquo;s
+lady.&nbsp; Clem consequently was obliged to go to the Hall for the
+purpose of practising, and so it came to pass that he was there at unusual
+hours and when the master was afield.&nbsp; These morning and afternoon
+calls did not cease when the concert was over.&nbsp; Clem&rsquo;s wife
+did not know anything about them, and, if she noticed his frequent absence,
+she was met with an excuse.&nbsp; Perhaps the worst, or almost the worst
+effect of relationships which we do not like to acknowledge, is the
+secrecy and equivocation which they beget.&nbsp; From the very first
+moment when the intimacy between the squire&rsquo;s wife and Clem began
+to be anything more than harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and to
+become contemptible.&nbsp; At the same time I believe he defended himself
+against himself with the weapons which were ever ready when self rose
+against self because of some wrong-doing.&nbsp; He was not as other
+men.&nbsp; It was absurd to class what he did with what an ordinary
+person might do, although externally his actions and those of the ordinary
+person might resemble one another.&nbsp; I cannot trace the steps by
+which the two sinners drew nearer and nearer together, for the simple
+reason that this is an autobiography, and not a novel.&nbsp; I do not
+know what the development was, nor did anybody except the person concerned.&nbsp;
+Neither do I know what was the mental history of Mrs. Butts during this
+unhappy period.&nbsp; She seldom talked about it afterwards.&nbsp; I
+do, however, happen to recollect hearing her once say that her greatest
+trouble was the cessation, from some unknown cause, of Clem&rsquo;s
+attempts - they were never many - to interest and amuse her.&nbsp; It
+is easy to understand how this should be.&nbsp; If a man is guilty of
+any defection from himself, of anything of which he is ashamed, everything
+which is better becomes a farce to him.&nbsp; After he has been betrayed
+by some passion, how can he pretend to the perfect enjoyment of what
+is pure?&nbsp; The moment he feels any disposition to rise, he is stricken
+through as if with an arrow, and he drops.&nbsp; Not until weeks, months,
+and even years have elapsed, does he feel justified in surrendering
+himself to a noble emotion.&nbsp; I have heard of persons who have been
+able to ascend easily and instantaneously from the mud to the upper
+air, and descend as easily; but to me at least they are incomprehensible.&nbsp;
+Clem, less than most men, suffered permanently, or indeed in any way
+from remorse, because he was so shielded by his peculiar philosophy;
+but I can quite believe that when he got into the habit of calling at
+the Hall at mid-day, his behaviour to his wife changed.<br>
+<br>
+One day in December the squire had gone out with the hounds.&nbsp; Clem,
+going on from bad to worse, had now reached the point of planning to
+be at the Hall when the squire was not at home.&nbsp; On that particular
+afternoon Clem was there.&nbsp; It was about half-past four o&rsquo;clock,
+and the master was not expected till six.&nbsp; There had been some
+music, the lady accompanying, and Clem singing.&nbsp; It was over, and
+Clem, sitting down beside her at the piano, and pointing out with his
+right hand some passage which had troubled him, had placed his left
+arm on her shoulder, and round her neck, she not resisting.&nbsp; He
+always swore afterwards that never till then had such a familiarity
+as this been permitted, and I believe that he did not tell a lie.&nbsp;
+But what was there in that familiarity?&nbsp; The worst was already
+there, and it was through a mere accident that it never showed itself.&nbsp;
+The accident was this.&nbsp; The squire, for some unknown reason, had
+returned earlier than usual, and dismounting in the stable-yard, had
+walked round the garden on the turf which came close to the windows
+of the ground floor.&nbsp; Passing the drawing-room window, and looking
+in by the edge of the drawn-down blind, he saw his wife and Clem just
+at the moment described.&nbsp; He slipped round to the door, took off
+his boots so that he might not be heard, and as there was a large screen
+inside the room he was able to enter it unobserved.&nbsp; Clem caught
+sight of him just as he emerged from behind the screen, and started
+up instantly in great confusion, the lady, with greater presence of
+mind, remaining perfectly still.&nbsp; Without a word the squire strode
+up to Clem, struck out at him, caught him just over the temple, and
+felled him instantaneously.&nbsp; He lay for some time senseless, and
+what passed between husband and wife I cannot say.&nbsp; After about
+ten minutes, perhaps, Clem came to himself; there was nobody to be seen;
+and he managed to get up and crawl home.&nbsp; He told his wife he had
+met with an accident; that he would go to bed, and that she should know
+all about it when he was better.&nbsp; His forehead was dressed, and
+to bed he went.&nbsp; That night Mrs. Butts had a letter.&nbsp; It ran
+as follows:-<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;MADAM, - It may at first sight seem a harsh thing for me to write
+and tell you what I have to say, but I can assure you I do not mean
+to be anything but kind to you, and I think it will be better, for reasons
+which I will afterwards explain, that I should communicate with you
+rather than with your husband.&nbsp; For some time past I have suspected
+that he was too fond of my wife, and last night I caught him with his
+arms round her neck.&nbsp; In a moment of not unjustifiable anger I
+knocked him down.&nbsp; I have not the honour of knowing you personally,
+but from what I have heard of you I am sure that he has not the slightest
+reason for playing with other women.&nbsp; A man who will do what he
+has done will be very likely to conceal from you the true cause of his
+disaster, and if you know the cause you may perhaps be able to reclaim
+him.&nbsp; If he has any sense of honour left in him, and of what is
+due to you, he will seek your pardon for his baseness, and you will
+have a hold on him afterwards which you would not have if you were in
+ignorance of what has happened.&nbsp; For him I do not care a straw,
+but for you I feel deeply, and I believe that my frankness with you,
+although it may cause you much suffering now, will save you more hereafter.&nbsp;
+I have only one condition to make.&nbsp; Mr. Butts must leave this place,
+and never let me see his face again.&nbsp; He has ruined my peace.&nbsp;
+Nothing will be published through me, for, as far as I can prevent it,
+I will have no public exposure.&nbsp; If Mr. Butts were to remain here
+it would be dangerous for us to meet, and probably everything, by some
+chance, would become common property. - Believe me to be, Madam, with
+many assurances of respect, truly yours, - .&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I cannot distinguish the precise proportion of cruelty in this letter.&nbsp;
+Did the writer designedly torture Butts by telling his wife, or did
+he really think that she would in the end be happier because Butts would
+not have a secret reserved from her, - a temptation to lying - and because
+with this secret in her possession, he might perhaps be restrained in
+future?&nbsp; Nobody knows.&nbsp; All we know is that there are very
+few human actions of which it can be said that this or that taken by
+itself produced them.&nbsp; With our inborn tendency to abstract, to
+separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not exist separately,
+we are always disposed to assign causes which are too simple, and which,
+in fact, have no being <i>in rerum natura</i>.&nbsp; Nothing in nature
+is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone.&nbsp; There is no
+such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician.&nbsp; I see no reason
+why even motives diametrically opposite should not unite in one resulting
+deed, and think it very probable that the squire was both cruel and
+merciful to the same person in the letter; influenced by exactly conflicting
+passions, whose conflict ended <i>so.<br>
+<br>
+</i>As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before.&nbsp;
+I do not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybody
+ever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long while afterwards.&nbsp;
+Clem, however, packed up and left the town, after selling his business.&nbsp;
+He had a reputation for restlessness; and his departure, although it
+was sudden, was no surprise.&nbsp; He betook himself to Australia, his
+wife going with him.&nbsp; I heard that they had gone, and heard also
+that he was tired of school-keeping in England, and had determined to
+try his fortune in another part of the world.&nbsp; Our friendship had
+dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about him.&nbsp; Mrs. Butts
+never uttered one word of reproach to her husband.&nbsp; I cannot say
+that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had accepted him,
+and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through her lack of sympathy
+with him that he had strayed, it was her duty more and more to draw
+him to herself.&nbsp; She had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst
+women, to seek in herself the reason for any wrong which was done to
+her.&nbsp; That almost instinctive tendency in men, to excuse, to transfer
+blame to others, to be angry with somebody else when they suffer from
+the consequences of their own misdeeds, in her did not exist.<br>
+<br>
+During almost the whole of her married life, before this affair between
+the squire and Clem, Mrs. Butts had had much trouble, although her trouble
+was, perhaps, rather the absence of joy than the presence of any poignant
+grief.&nbsp; She was much by herself.&nbsp; She had never been a great
+reader, but in her frequent solitude she was forced to do something
+in order to obtain relief, and she naturally turned to the Bible.&nbsp;
+It would be foolish to say that the Bible alone was to be credited with
+the support she received.&nbsp; It may only have been the occasion for
+a revelation of the strength that was in her.&nbsp; Reading, however,
+under such circumstances, is likely to be peculiarly profitable.&nbsp;
+It is never so profitable as when it is undertaken in order that a positive
+need may be satisfied or an inquiry answered.&nbsp; She discovered in
+the Bible much that persons to whom it is a mere literature would never
+find.&nbsp; The water of life was not merely admirable to the eye; she
+drank it, and knew what a property it possessed for quenching thirst.&nbsp;
+No doubt the thought of a heaven hereafter was especially consolatory.&nbsp;
+She was able to endure, and even to be happy because the vision of lengthening
+sorrow was bounded by a better world beyond.&nbsp; &ldquo;A very poor,
+barbarous gospel,&rdquo; thinks the philosopher who rests on his Marcus
+Antoninus and Epictetus.&nbsp; I do not mean to say, that in the shape
+in which she believed this doctrine, it was not poor and barbarous,
+but yet we all of us, whatever our creed may be, must lay hold at times
+for salvation upon something like it.&nbsp; Those who have been plunged
+up to the very lips in affliction know its necessity.&nbsp; To such
+as these it is idle work for the prosperous and the comfortable to preach
+satisfaction with the life that now is.&nbsp; There are seasons when
+it is our sole resource to recollect that in a few short years we shall
+be at rest.&nbsp; While upon this subject I may say, too, that some
+injustice has been done to the Christian creed of immortality as an
+influence in determining men&rsquo;s conduct.&nbsp; Paul preached the
+imminent advent of Christ and besought his disciples, therefore, to
+watch, and we ask ourselves what is the moral value to us of such an
+admonition.&nbsp; But surely if we are to have any reasons for being
+virtuous, this is as good as any other.&nbsp; It is just as respectable
+to believe that we ought to abstain from iniquity because Christ is
+at hand, and we expect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by
+our abstention we shall be healthier or more prosperous.&nbsp; Paul
+had a dream - an absurd dream let us call it - of an immediate millennium,
+and of the return of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judging
+mankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil.&nbsp; It was
+a baseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous.&nbsp;
+It is anything but that, it is the very opposite of that.&nbsp; Putting
+aside its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy
+of all noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in the present
+condition of things.<br>
+<br>
+Going back to Clem&rsquo;s wife; she laid hold, as I have said, upon
+heaven.&nbsp; The thought wrought in her something more than forgetfulness
+of pain or the expectation of counterpoising bliss.&nbsp; We can understand
+what this something was, for although we know no such heaven as hers,
+a new temper is imparted to us, a new spirit breathed into us; I was
+about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when we consider that we live
+surrounded by the soundless depths in which the stars repose.&nbsp;
+Such a consideration has a direct practical effect upon us, and so had
+the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why dost thou judge
+thy brother,&rdquo; says Paul, &ldquo;for we shall all stand before
+the judgment-seat of God.&rdquo;&nbsp; Paul does not mean that God will
+punish him and that we may rest satisfied that our enemy will be turned
+into hell fire.&nbsp; Rather does he mean, what we, too, feel, that,
+reflecting on the great idea of God, and upon all that it involves,
+our animosities are softened, and our heat against our brother is cooled.<br>
+<br>
+One or two reflections may perhaps be permitted here on this passage
+in Mrs. Butts&rsquo; history.<br>
+<br>
+The fidelity of Clem&rsquo;s wife to him, if not entirely due to the
+New Testament, was in a great measure traceable to it.&nbsp; She had
+learned from the Epistle to the Corinthians that charity beareth all
+things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things;
+and she interpreted this to mean, not merely charity to those whom she
+loved by nature, but charity to those with whom she was not in sympathy,
+and who even wronged her.&nbsp; Christianity no doubt does teach such
+a charity as this, a love which is to be: independent of mere personal
+likes and dislikes, a love of the human in man.&nbsp; The natural man,
+the man of this century, uncontrolled by Christianity, considers himself
+a model of what is virtuous and heroic if he really loves his friends,
+and he permits all kinds of savage antipathies to those of his fellow
+creatures with whom he is not in harmony.&nbsp; Jesus on the other hand
+asks with His usual perfect simplicity, &ldquo;If ye love them which
+love you, what reward have ye?&nbsp; Do not even the publicans the same?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+It would be a great step in advance for most of us to love anybody,
+and the publicans of the time of Jesus must have been a much more Christian
+set than most Christians of the present day; but that we should love
+those who do not love us is a height never scaled now, except by a few
+of the elect in whom Christ still survives.&nbsp; In the gospel of Luke,
+also, Mrs. Butts read that she was to hope for nothing again from her
+love, and that she was to be merciful, as her Father in heaven is merciful.&nbsp;
+That is really the expression of the <i>idea </i>in morality, and incalculable
+is the blessing that our great religious teacher should have been bold
+enough to teach the idea, and not any limitation of it.&nbsp; He always
+taught it, the inward born, the heavenly law towards which everything
+strives.&nbsp; He always trusted it; He did not deal in exceptions;
+He relied on it to the uttermost, never despairing.&nbsp; This has always
+seemed to me to be the real meaning of the word faith.&nbsp; It is permanent
+confidence in the idea, a confidence never to be broken down by apparent
+failure, or by examples by which ordinary people prove that qualification
+is necessary.&nbsp; It was precisely because Jesus taught the idea,
+and nothing below it, that He had such authority over a soul like my
+friend&rsquo;s, and the effect produced by Him could not have been produced
+by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity.<br>
+<br>
+It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had a powerful
+influence in enabling men and women to endure, although I object to
+giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a necessity in all
+ages.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one
+of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This is the last word which can be said.&nbsp; Nothing can go beyond
+it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake
+under our feet.&nbsp; All life is summed up, and due account is taken
+of it, according to its degree.&nbsp; Mrs. Butts&rsquo; Calvinism, however,
+hardly took the usual dogmatic form.&nbsp; She was too simple to penetrate
+the depths of metaphysical theology, and she never would have dared
+to set down any of her fellow creatures as irrevocably lost.&nbsp; She
+adapted the Calvinistic creed to something which suited her.&nbsp; For
+example, she fully understood what St. Paul means when he tells the
+Thessalonians that <i>because </i>they were called, <i>therefore </i>they
+were to stand fast.&nbsp; She thought with Paul that being called; having
+a duty plainly laid upon her; being bidden as if by a general to do
+something, she <i>ought </i>to stand fast; and she stood fast, supported
+against all pressure by the consciousness of fulfilling the special
+orders of One who was her superior.&nbsp; There is no doubt that this
+dogma of a personal calling is a great consolation, and it is a great
+truth.&nbsp; Looking at the masses of humanity, driven this way and
+that way, the Christian teaching is apt to be forgotten that for each
+individual soul there is a vocation as real as if that soul were alone
+upon the planet.&nbsp; Yet it is a fact.&nbsp; We are blinded to it
+and can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of our little intellects
+to conceive a destiny which shall take care of every atom of life on
+the globe: we are compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people
+as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept
+into forgetfulness.&nbsp; But the truth of truths is that the mind of
+the universe is not our mind, or at any rate controlled by our limitations.<br>
+<br>
+This has been a long digression which I did not intend; but I could
+not help it.&nbsp; I was anxious to show how Mrs. Butts met her trouble
+through her religion.&nbsp; The apostle says that &ldquo;<i>they drank
+of that spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+That was true of her.&nbsp; The way through the desert was not annihilated;
+the path remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was accompanied
+to the end by a sweet stream to which she could turn aside, and from
+which she could obtain refreshment and strength.<br>
+<br>
+Just about the time that we began our meetings near Drury Lane, I heard
+that Clem was dead; that he had died abroad.&nbsp; I knew nothing more;
+I thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, but I had parted
+from both long ago, and I went on with my work.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER V - WHAT IT ALL CAME TO<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+For two years or thereabouts, M&rsquo;Kay and myself continued our labours
+in the Drury Lane neighbourhood.&nbsp; There is a proverb that it is
+the first step which is the most difficult in the achievement of any
+object, and the proverb has been altered by ascribing the main part
+of the difficulty to the last step.&nbsp; Neither the first nor the
+last has been the difficult step with me, but rather what lies between.&nbsp;
+The first is usually helped by the excitement and the promise of new
+beginnings, and the last by the prospect of triumph; but the intermediate
+path is unassisted by enthusiasm, and it is here we are so likely to
+faint.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay nevertheless persevered, supporting me, who
+otherwise might have been tempted to despair, and at the end of the
+two years we were still at our posts.&nbsp; We had, however, learned
+something.&nbsp; We had learned that we could not make the slightest
+impression on Drury Lane proper.&nbsp; Now and then an idler, or sometimes
+a dozen, lounged in, but what was said was strange to them; they were
+out of their own world as completely as if they were in another planet,
+and all our efforts to reach them by simplicity of statement and by
+talking about things which we supposed would interest them utterly failed.&nbsp;
+I did not know, till I came in actual contact with them, how far away
+the classes which lie at the bottom of great cities are from those above
+them; how completely they are inaccessible to motives which act upon
+ordinary human beings, and how deeply they are sunk beyond ray of sun
+or stars, immersed in the selfishness naturally begotten of their incessant
+struggle for existence and the incessant warfare with society.&nbsp;
+It was an awful thought to me, ever present on those Sundays, and haunting
+me at other times, that men, women, and children were living in such
+brutish degradation, and that as they died others would take their place.&nbsp;
+Our civilisation seemed nothing but a thin film or crust lying over
+a volcanic pit, and I often wondered whether some day the pit would
+not break up through it and destroy us all.&nbsp; Great towns are answerable
+for the creation and maintenance of the masses of dark, impenetrable,
+subterranean blackguardism, with which we became acquainted.&nbsp; The
+filthy gloom of the sky, the dirt of the street, the absence of fresh
+air, the herding of the poor into huge districts which cannot be opened
+up by those who would do good, are tremendous agencies of corruption
+which are active at such a rate that it is appalling to reflect what
+our future will be if the accumulation of population be not checked.&nbsp;
+To stand face to face with the insoluble is not pleasant.&nbsp; A man
+will do anything rather than confess it is beyond him.&nbsp; He will
+create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possible escape here and there,
+but this problem of Drury Lane was round and hard like a ball of adamant.&nbsp;
+The only thing I could do was faintly, and I was about to say stupidly,
+hope - for I had no rational, tangible grounds for hoping - that some
+force of which we are not now aware might some day develop itself which
+will be able to resist and remove the pressure which sweeps and crushes
+into a hell, sealed from the upper air, millions of human souls every
+year in one quarter of the globe alone.<br>
+<br>
+M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would
+be a mistake to say that they ended in nothing.&nbsp; It often happens
+that a grand attempt, although it may fail - miserably fail - is fruitful
+in the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true,
+but one which would never have been attained without it.&nbsp; A youth
+strives after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because
+he has never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the
+sweeter for the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred
+yards away will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and
+his arm for fifty yards.&nbsp; So it was with M&rsquo;Kay.&nbsp; He
+did not convert Drury Lane, but he saved two or three.&nbsp; One man
+whom we came to know was a labourer in Somerset House, a kind of coal
+porter employed in carrying coals into the offices there from the cellars
+below, and in other menial duties.&nbsp; He had about fifteen or sixteen
+shillings a week, and as the coals must necessarily be in the different
+rooms before ten o&rsquo;clock in the morning, he began work early,
+and was obliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand.&nbsp;
+This man had originally been a small tradesman in a country town.&nbsp;
+He was honest, but he never could or never would push his trade in any
+way.&nbsp; He was fond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings,
+disliked his shop, and ought to have been a carpenter or cabinet-maker
+- not as a master but as a journeyman, for he had no ability whatever
+to control men or direct large operations.&nbsp; He was married, and
+a sense of duty to his wife - he fortunately had no children - induced
+him to stand or sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would
+not come to buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying
+as any favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced
+by his more energetic or more obsequious rivals.&nbsp; In the end he
+was obliged to put up his shutters.&nbsp; Unhappily for him, he had
+never been a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious
+worship in the town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him.&nbsp;
+Not being master of any craft, he was in a pitiable plight, and was
+slowly sinking, when he applied to the solicitor of the political party
+for which he had always voted to assist him.&nbsp; The solicitor applied
+to the member, and the member, much regretting the difficulty of obtaining
+places for grown-up men, and explaining the pressure upon the Treasury,
+wrote to say that the only post at his disposal was that of labourer.&nbsp;
+He would have liked to offer a messengership, but the Treasury had hundreds
+of applications from great people who wished to dispose of favourite
+footmen whose services they no longer required.&nbsp; Our friend Taylor
+had by this time been brought very low, or he would have held out for
+something better, but there was nothing to be done.&nbsp; He was starving,
+and he therefore accepted; came to London; got a room, one room only,
+near Clare Market, and began his new duties.&nbsp; He was able to pick
+up a shilling or two more weekly by going on errands for the clerks
+during his slack time in the day, so that altogether on the average
+he made up about eighteen shillings.&nbsp; Wandering about the Clare
+Market region on Sunday he found us out, came in, and remained constant.&nbsp;
+Naturally, as we had so few adherents, we gradually knew these few very
+intimately, and Taylor would often spend a holiday or part of the Sunday
+with us.&nbsp; He was not eminent for anything in particular, and an
+educated man, selecting as his friends those only who stand for something,
+would not have taken the slightest notice of him.&nbsp; He had read
+nothing particular, and thought nothing particular - he was indeed one
+of the masses - but in this respect different, that he had not the tendency
+to association, aggregation, or clanship which belong to the masses
+generally.&nbsp; He was different, of course, in all his ways from his
+neighbours born and bred to Clare Market and its alleys.&nbsp; Although
+commonplace, he had demands made upon him for an endurance by no means
+commonplace, and he had sorrows which were as exquisite as those of
+his betters.&nbsp; He did not much resent his poverty.&nbsp; To that
+I think he would have submitted, and in fact he did submit to it cheerfully.&nbsp;
+What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him at the office.&nbsp;
+He was a servant of servants.&nbsp; The messengers, who themselves were
+exposed to all the petty tyrannies of the clerks, and dared not reply,
+were Taylor&rsquo;s masters, and sought a compensation for their own
+serfdom by making his ten times worse.&nbsp; The head messenger, who
+had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor had &ldquo;answered&rdquo;
+he would have been reported.&nbsp; He had never been a person of much
+importance, but at least he had been independent, and it was a new experience
+for him to feel that he was a thing fit for nothing but to be cuffed
+and cursed.&nbsp; Upon this point he used to get eloquent - as eloquent
+as he could be, for he had small power of expression, and he would describe
+to me the despair which came over him down in those dark vaults at the
+prospect of life continuing after this fashion, and with not the minutest
+gleam of light even at the very end.&nbsp; Nobody ever cared to know
+the most ordinary facts about him.&nbsp; Nobody inquired whether he
+was married or single; nobody troubled himself when he was ill.&nbsp;
+If he was away, his pay was stopped; and when he returned to work nobody
+asked if he was better.&nbsp; Who can wonder that at first, when he
+was an utter stranger in a strange land, he was overcome by the situation,
+and that the world was to him a dungeon worse than that of Chillon?&nbsp;
+Who can wonder that he was becoming reckless?&nbsp; A little more of
+such a life would have transformed him into a brute.&nbsp; He had not
+the ability to become revolutionary, or it would have made him a conspirator.&nbsp;
+Suffering of any kind is hard to bear, but the suffering which especially
+damages character is that which is caused by the neglect or oppression
+of man.&nbsp; At any rate it was so in Taylor&rsquo;s case.&nbsp; I
+believe that he would have been patient under any inevitable ordinance
+of nature, but he could not lie still under contempt, the knowledge
+that to those about him he was of less consequence than the mud under
+their feet.&nbsp; He was timid and, after his failure as a shopkeeper,
+and the near approach to the workhouse, he dreaded above everything
+being again cast adrift.&nbsp; Strange conflict arose in him, for the
+insults to which he was exposed drove him almost to madness; and yet
+the dread of dismissal in a moment checked him when he was about to
+&ldquo;fire up,&rdquo; as he called it, and reduced him to a silence
+which was torture.&nbsp; Once he was ordered to bring some coals for
+the messenger&rsquo;s lobby.&nbsp; The man who gave him the order, finding
+that he was a long time bringing them, went to the top of the stairs,
+and bawled after him with an oath to make haste.&nbsp; The reason of
+the delay was that Taylor had two loads to bring up - one for somebody
+else.&nbsp; When he got to the top of the steps, the messenger with
+another oath took the coals, and saying that he &ldquo;would teach him
+to skulk there again,&rdquo; kicked the other coal-scuttle down to the
+bottom.&nbsp; Taylor himself told me this; and yet, although he would
+have rejoiced if the man had dropped down dead, and would willingly
+have shot him, he was dumb.&nbsp; The check operated in an instant.&nbsp;
+He saw himself without a penny, and in the streets.&nbsp; He went down
+into the cellar, and raged and wept for an hour.&nbsp; Had he been a
+workman, he would probably have throttled his enemy, or tried to do
+it, or what is more likely, his enemy would not have dared to treat
+him in such fashion, but he was powerless, and once losing his situation
+he would have sunk down into the gutter, whence he would have been swept
+by the parish into the indiscriminate heap of London pauperism, and
+carted away to the Union, a conclusion which was worse to him than being
+hung.<br>
+<br>
+Another of our friends was a waiter in one of the public-houses and
+chop-houses combined, of which there are so many in the Strand.&nbsp;
+He lived in a wretched alley which ran from St. Clement&rsquo;s Church
+to Boswell Court - I have forgotten its name - a dark crowded passage.&nbsp;
+He was a man of about sixty - invariably called John, without the addition
+of any surname.&nbsp; I knew him long before we opened our room, for
+I was in the habit of frequently visiting the chop-house in which he
+served.&nbsp; His hours were incredible.&nbsp; He began at nine o&rsquo;clock
+in the morning with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables and
+the gas globes, and at twelve business commenced with early luncheons.&nbsp;
+Not till three-quarters of an hour after midnight could he leave, for
+the house was much used by persons who supped there after the theatres.&nbsp;
+During almost the whole of this time he was on his legs, and very often
+he was unable to find two minutes in the day in which to get his dinner.&nbsp;
+Sundays, however, were free.&nbsp; John was not a head waiter, but merely
+a subordinate, and I never knew why at his time of life he had not risen
+to a better position.&nbsp; He used to say that &ldquo;things had been
+against him,&rdquo; and I had no right to seek for further explanations.&nbsp;
+He was married, and had had three children, of whom one only was living
+- a boy of ten years old, whom he hoped to get into the public-house
+as a potboy for a beginning.&nbsp; Like Taylor, the world had well-nigh
+overpowered John entirely - crushed him out of all shape, so that what
+he was originally, or might have been, it was almost impossible to tell.&nbsp;
+There was no particular character left in him.&nbsp; He may once have
+been this or that, but every angle now was knocked off, as it is knocked
+off from the rounded pebbles which for ages have been dragged up and
+down the beach by the waves.&nbsp; For a lifetime he had been exposed
+to all sorts of whims and caprices, generally speaking of the most unreasonable
+kind, and he had become so trained to take everything without remonstrance
+or murmuring that every cross in his life came to him as a chop alleged
+by an irritated customer to be raw or done to a cinder.&nbsp; Poor wretch!
+he had one trouble, however, which he could not accept with such equanimity,
+or rather with such indifference.&nbsp; His wife was a drunkard.&nbsp;
+This was an awful trial to him.&nbsp; The worst consequence was that
+his boy knew that his mother got drunk.&nbsp; The neighbours kindly
+enough volunteered to look after the little man when he was not at school,
+and they waylaid him and gave him dinner when his mother was intoxicated;
+but frequently he was the first when he returned to find out that there
+was nothing for him to eat, and many a time he got up at night as late
+as twelve o&rsquo;clock, crawled downstairs, and went off to his father
+to tell him that &ldquo;she was very bad, and he could not go to sleep.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The father, then, had to keep his son in the Strand till it was time
+to close, take him back, and manage in the best way he could.&nbsp;
+Over and over again was he obliged to sit by this wretched woman&rsquo;s
+bedside till breakfast time, and then had to go to work as usual.&nbsp;
+Let anybody who has seen a case of this kind say whether the State ought
+not to provide for the relief of such men as John, and whether he ought
+not to have been able to send his wife away to some institution where
+she might have been tended and restrained from destroying, not merely
+herself, but her husband and her child.&nbsp; John hardly bore up under
+this sorrow.&nbsp; A man may endure much, provided he knows that he
+will be well supported when his day&rsquo;s toil is over; but if the
+help for which he looks fails, he falls.&nbsp; Oh those weary days in
+that dark back dining-room, from which not a square inch of sky was
+visible! weary days haunted by a fear that while he was there unknown
+mischief was being done! weary days, whose close nevertheless he dreaded!&nbsp;
+Beaten down, baffled, disappointed, if we are in tolerable health we
+can contrive to live on some almost impossible chance, some most distant
+flicker of hope.&nbsp; It is astonishing how minute a crack in the heavy
+uniform cloud will relieve us; but when with all our searching we can
+see nothing, then at last we sink.&nbsp; Such was John&rsquo;s case
+when I first came to know him.&nbsp; He attracted me rather, and bit
+by bit he confided his story to me.&nbsp; He found out that I might
+be trusted, and that I could sympathise, and he told me what he had
+never told to anybody before.&nbsp; I was curious to discover whether
+religion had done anything for him, and I put the question to him in
+an indirect way.&nbsp; His answer was that &ldquo;some on &rsquo;em
+say there&rsquo;s a better world where everything will be put right,
+but somehow it seemed too good to be true.&rdquo;&nbsp; That was his
+reason for disbelief, and heaven had not the slightest effect on him.&nbsp;
+He found out the room, and was one of our most constant friends.<br>
+<br>
+Another friend was of a totally different type.&nbsp; His name was Cardinal.&nbsp;
+He was a Yorkshireman, broad-shouldered, ruddy in the face, short-necked,
+inclined apparently to apoplexy, and certainly to passion.&nbsp; He
+was a commercial traveller in the cloth trade, and as he had the southern
+counties for his district, London was his home when he was not upon
+his journeys.&nbsp; His wife was a curious contrast to him.&nbsp; She
+was dark-haired, pinched-up, thin-lipped, and always seemed as if she
+suffered from some chronic pain or gnawing - not sufficient to make
+her ill, but sufficient to make her miserable.&nbsp; They had no children.&nbsp;
+Cardinal in early life had been a member of an orthodox Dissenting congregation,
+but he had fallen away.&nbsp; He had nobody to guide him, and the position
+into which he fell was peculiar.&nbsp; He never busied himself about
+religion or philosophy; indeed he had had no training which would have
+led him to take an interest in abstract questions, but he read all kinds
+of romances and poetry without any order and upon no system.&nbsp; He
+had no discriminating faculty, and mixed up together the most heterogeneous
+mass of trumpery novels, French translations, and the best English authors,
+provided only they were unworldly or sentimental.&nbsp; Neither did
+he know how far to take what he read and use it in his daily life.&nbsp;
+He often selected some fantastical motive which he had found set forth
+as operative in one of his heroes, and he brought it into his business,
+much to the astonishment of his masters and customers.&nbsp; For this
+reason he was not stable.&nbsp; He changed employers two or three times;
+and, so far as I could make out, his ground of objection to each of
+the firms whom he left might have been a ground of dislike in a girl
+to a suitor, but certainly nothing more.&nbsp; During the intervals
+of his engagements, unless he was pressed for money, he did nothing
+- not from laziness, but because he had got a notion in his head that
+his mind wanted rest and reinvigoration.&nbsp; His habit then was to
+consume the whole day - day after day - in reading or in walking out
+by himself.&nbsp; It may easily be supposed that with a temperament
+like his, and with nobody near him to take him by the hand, he made
+great mistakes.&nbsp; His wife and he cared nothing for one another,
+but she was jealous to the last degree.&nbsp; I never saw such jealousy.&nbsp;
+It was strange that, although she almost hated him, she watched him
+with feline sharpness and patience, and would even have killed any woman
+whom she knew had won his affection.&nbsp; He, on the other hand, openly
+avowed that marriage without love was nothing, and flaunted without
+the least modification the most ideal theories as to the relation between
+man and woman.&nbsp; Not that he ever went actually wrong.&nbsp; His
+boyish education, his natural purity, and a fear never wholly suppressed,
+restrained him.&nbsp; He exasperated people by his impracticability,
+and it must be acknowledged that it is very irritating in a difficult
+complexity demanding the gravest consideration - the balancing of this
+against that - to hear a man suddenly propose some naked principle with
+which everybody is acquainted, and decide by it solely.&nbsp; I came
+to know him through M&rsquo;Kay, who had known him for years; but M&rsquo;Kay
+at last broke out against him, and called him a stupid fool when he
+threw up a handsome salary and refused to serve any longer under a house
+which had always treated him well, because they, moving with the times,
+had determined to offer their customers a cheaper description of goods,
+which Cardinal thought was dishonest.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay said, and said
+truly, that many poor persons would buy these goods who could buy nothing
+else, and that Cardinal, before yielding to such scruples, ought to
+satisfy himself that, by yielding, he would not become a burden upon
+others less fanciful.&nbsp; This was just what happened.&nbsp; Cardinal
+could get no work again for a long time, and had to borrow money.&nbsp;
+I was sorry; but for my part, this and other eccentricities did not
+disturb my confidence in him.&nbsp; He was an honest, affectionate soul,
+and his peculiarities were a necessary result of the total chaos of
+a time without any moral guidance.&nbsp; With no church, no philosophy,
+no religion, the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont relax their
+hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and thither,
+arriving at nothing.&nbsp; Cardinal was adrift, like thousands and hundreds
+of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchy darkness of
+the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voices offer us pilotage.&nbsp;
+It spoke well for him that he did nothing worse than take a few useless
+phantoms on board which did him no harm, and that he held fast to his
+own instinct for truth and goodness.&nbsp; I never let myself be annoyed
+by what he produced to me from his books.&nbsp; All that I discarded.&nbsp;
+Underneath all that was a solid worth which I loved, and which was mostly
+not vocal.&nbsp; What was vocal in him was, I am bound to say, not of
+much value.<br>
+<br>
+About the time when our room opened, Mrs. Cardinal had become almost
+insupportable to her husband.&nbsp; Poor woman; I always pitied her;
+she was alone sometimes for a fortnight at a stretch; she read nothing;
+there was no child to occupy her thoughts; she knew that her husband
+lived in a world into which she never entered, and she had nothing to
+do but to brood over imaginary infidelities.&nbsp; She was literally
+possessed, and who shall be hard upon her?&nbsp; Nobody cared for her;
+everybody with whom her husband associated disliked her, and she knew
+perfectly well they never asked her to their houses except for his sake.&nbsp;
+Cardinal vowed at last he would endure her no longer, and that they
+must separate.&nbsp; He was induced one Sunday morning, when his resolution
+was strong within him, and he was just about to give effect to it, to
+come with us.&nbsp; The quiet seemed to soothe him, and he went home
+with me afterwards.&nbsp; He was not slow to disclose to me his miserable
+condition, and his resolve to change it.&nbsp; I do not know now what
+I said, but it appeared to me that he ought not to change it, and that
+change would be for him most perilous.&nbsp; I thought that with a little
+care life might become at least bearable with his wife; that by treating
+her not so much as if she were criminal, but as if she were diseased,
+hatred might pass into pity, and pity into merciful tenderness to her,
+and that they might dwell together upon terms not harder than those
+upon which many persons who have made mistakes in youth agree to remain
+with each other; terms which, after much consideration, they adjudge
+it better to accept than to break loose, and bring upon themselves and
+those connected with them all that open rupture involves.&nbsp; The
+difficulty was to get Cardinal to give up his theory of what two abstract
+human beings should do between whom no love exists.&nbsp; It seemed
+to him something like atheism to forsake his clearly-discerned, simple
+rule for a course which was dictated by no easily-grasped higher law,
+and it was very difficult to persuade him that there is anything of
+equal authority in a law less rigid in its outline.&nbsp; However, he
+went home.&nbsp; I called on him some time afterwards, and saw that
+a peace, or at any rate a truce, was proclaimed, which lasted up to
+the day of his death.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Kay and I agreed to make as much
+of Mrs. Cardinal as we could, and yielding to urgent invitation, she
+came to the room.&nbsp; This wonderfully helped to heal her.&nbsp; She
+began to feel that she was not overlooked, put on one side, or despised,
+and the bonds which bound her constricted lips into bitterness were
+loosened.<br>
+<br>
+Another friend, and the last whom I shall name, was a young man named
+Clark.&nbsp; He was lame, and had been so from childhood.&nbsp; His
+father was a tradesman, working hard from early morning till late at
+night, and burdened with a number of children.&nbsp; The boy Richard,
+shut out from the companionship of his fellows, had a great love of
+books.&nbsp; When he left school his father did not know what to do
+with him - in fact there was only one occupation open to him, and that
+was clerical work of one kind or another.&nbsp; At last he got a place
+in a house in Fleet Street, which did a large business in those days
+in sending newspapers into the country.&nbsp; His whole occupation all
+day long was to write addresses, and for this he received twenty-five
+shillings a week, his hours being from nine o&rsquo;clock till seven.&nbsp;
+The office in which he sat was crowded, and in order to squeeze the
+staff into the smallest space, rent being dear, a gallery had been run
+round the wall about four feet from the ceiling.&nbsp; This was provided
+with desks and gas lamps, and up there Clark sat, artificial light being
+necessary four days out of five.&nbsp; He came straight from the town
+in which his father lived to Fleet Street, and once settled in it there
+seemed no chance of change for the better.&nbsp; He knew what his father&rsquo;s
+struggles were; he could not go back to him, and he had not the energy
+to attempt to lift himself.&nbsp; It is very doubtful too whether he
+could have succeeded in achieving any improvement, whatever his energy
+might have been.&nbsp; He had got lodgings in Newcastle Street, and
+to these he returned in the evening, remaining there alone with his
+little library, and seldom moving out of doors.&nbsp; He was unhealthy
+constitutionally, and his habits contributed to make him more so.&nbsp;
+Everything which he saw which was good seemed only to sharpen the contrast
+between himself and his lot, and his reading was a curse to him rather
+than a blessing.&nbsp; I sometimes wished that he had never inherited
+any love whatever for what is usually considered to be the Best, and
+that he had been endowed with an organisation coarse and commonplace,
+like that of his colleagues.&nbsp; If he went into company which suited
+him, or read anything which interested him, it seemed as if the ten
+hours of the gallery in Fleet Street had been made thereby only the
+more insupportable, and his habitual mood was one of despondency, so
+that his fellow clerks who knew his tastes not unnaturally asked what
+was the use of them if they only made him wretched; and they were more
+than ever convinced that in their amusements lay true happiness.&nbsp;
+Habit, which is the saviour of most of us, the opiate which dulls the
+otherwise unbearable miseries of life, only served to make Clark more
+sensitive.&nbsp; The monotony of that perpetual address-copying was
+terrible.&nbsp; He has told me with a kind of shame what an effect it
+had upon him - that sometimes for days he would feed upon the prospect
+of the most childish trifle because it would break in some slight degree
+the uniformity of his toil.&nbsp; For example, he would sometimes change
+from quill to steel pens and back again, and he found himself actually
+looking forward with a kind of joy - merely because of the variation
+- to the day on which he had fixed to go back to the quill after using
+steel.&nbsp; He would determine, two or three days beforehand, to get
+up earlier, and to walk to Fleet Street by way of Great Queen Street
+and Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn Fields, and upon this he would subsist till
+the day came.&nbsp; He could make no longer excursions because of his
+lameness.&nbsp; All this may sound very much like simple silliness to
+most people, but those who have not been bound to a wheel do not know
+what thoughts come into the head of the strongest man who is extended
+on it.&nbsp; Clark sat side by side in his gallery with other young
+men of rather a degraded type, and the confinement bred in them a filthy
+grossness with which they tormented him.&nbsp; They excited in him loathsome
+images, from which he could not free himself either by day or night.&nbsp;
+He was peculiarly weak in his inability to cast off impressions, or
+to get rid of mental pictures when once formed, and his distress at
+being haunted by these hateful, disgusting thoughts was pitiable.&nbsp;
+They were in fact almost more than thoughts, they were transportations
+out of himself - real visions.&nbsp; It would have been his salvation
+if he could have been a carpenter or a bricklayer, in country air, but
+this could not be.<br>
+<br>
+Clark had no power to think connectedly to a conclusion.&nbsp; When
+an idea came into his head, he dwelt upon it incessantly, and no correction
+of the false path upon which it set him was possible, because he avoided
+society.&nbsp; Work over, he was so sick of people that he went back
+to himself.&nbsp; So it came to pass that when brought into company,
+what he believed and cherished was frequently found to be open to obvious
+objection, and was often nothing better than nonsense which was rudely,
+and as he himself was forced to admit, justly overthrown.&nbsp; He ought
+to have been surrounded with intelligent friends, who would have enabled
+him to see continually the other side, and who would have prevented
+his long and useless wanderings.&nbsp; Like many other persons, too,
+whom I have known - just in proportion to his lack of penetrative power
+was his tendency to occupy himself with difficult questions.&nbsp; By
+a cruel destiny he was impelled to dabble in matters for which he was
+totally unfitted.&nbsp; He never could go beyond his author a single
+step, and he lost himself in endless mazes.&nbsp; If he could but have
+been persuaded to content himself with sweet presentations of wholesome
+happy existence, with stories and with history, how much better it would
+have been for him!&nbsp; He had had no proper training whatever for
+anything more, he was ignorant of the exact meaning of the proper terminology
+of science, and an unlucky day it was for him when he picked up on a
+bookstall some very early translation of some German book on philosophy.&nbsp;
+One reason, as may be conjectured, for his mistakes was his education
+in dissenting Calvinism, a religion which is entirely metaphysical,
+and encourages, unhappily, in everybody a taste for tremendous problems.&nbsp;
+So long as Calvinism is unshaken, the mischief is often not obvious,
+because a ready solution taken on trust is provided; but when doubts
+arise, the evil results become apparent, and the poor helpless victim,
+totally at a loss, is torn first in this direction and then in the other,
+and cannot let these questions alone.&nbsp; He has been taught to believe
+they are connected with salvation, and he is compelled still to busy
+himself with them, rather than with simple external piety.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER VI - DRURY LANE THEOLOGY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Such were some of our disciples.&nbsp; I do not think that church or
+chapel would have done them much good.&nbsp; Preachers are like unskilled
+doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint.&nbsp; They
+do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which
+robs us of life.&nbsp; If any of these persons just described had gone
+to church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set
+topics, none of which would have concerned them.&nbsp; Their trouble
+was not the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the personality
+of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist.&nbsp; They all
+<i>wanted </i>something distinctly.&nbsp; They had great gaping needs
+which they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special.&nbsp;
+Some of these necessities no words could in any way meet.&nbsp; It was
+obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his
+gallery and his copying if he was to live - at least in sanity.&nbsp;
+He had fortunately learned shorthand, and M&rsquo;Kay got him employment
+on a newspaper.&nbsp; His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect
+at first, but he was sent to attend meetings where <i>verbatim </i>reports
+were not necessary, and he quickly advanced.&nbsp; Taylor, too, we tried
+to remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-of-doors
+porter.&nbsp; The poor man was now at least in the open air, and freed
+from insolent tyranny.&nbsp; This, however, was help such as anybody
+might have given.&nbsp; The question of most importance is, What gospel
+had we to give?&nbsp; Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday?&nbsp;
+What was our justification?&nbsp; In the first place, there was the
+simple quietude.&nbsp; The retreat from the streets and from miserable
+cares into a place where there was peace and room for reflection was
+something.&nbsp; It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries
+to scoff at religious services.&nbsp; To the poor the cathedral or the
+church might be an immense benefit, if only for the reason that they
+present a barrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation by
+architecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on something beyond
+the business which presses on them during the week.&nbsp; Poor people
+frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read.&nbsp; Moreover,
+they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than that of a book.&nbsp;
+They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything to say, when they
+would not care to look at what he said if it were printed.&nbsp; But
+to come more closely to the point.&nbsp; Our main object was to create
+in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even some joy in it.&nbsp;
+That was our religion; that was the central thought of all we said and
+did, giving shape and tendency to everything.&nbsp; We admitted nothing
+which did not help us in that direction, and everything which did help
+us.&nbsp; Our attempts, to any one who had not the key, may have seemed
+vague and desultory.&nbsp; We might by a stranger have been accused
+of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in this subject and now in
+that, but after a while he would have found that though we were weak
+creatures, with no pretence to special knowledge in any subject, we
+at least knew what we meant, and tried to accomplish it.&nbsp; For my
+own part, I was happy when I had struck that path.&nbsp; I felt as if
+somehow, after many errors, I had once more gained a road, a religion
+in fact, and one which essentially was not new but old, the religion
+of the Reconciliation, the reconciliation of man with God; differing
+from the current creed in so far as I did not lay stress upon sin as
+the cause of estrangement, but yet agreeing with it in making it my
+duty of duties to suppress revolt, and to submit calmly and sometimes
+cheerfully to the Creator.&nbsp; This surely, under a thousand disguises,
+has been the meaning of all the forms of worship which we have seen
+in the world.&nbsp; Pain and death are nothing new, and men have been
+driven into perplexed scepticism, and even insurrection by them, ever
+since men came into being.&nbsp; Always, however, have the majority,
+the vast majority of the race, felt instinctively that in this scepticism
+and insurrection they could not abide, and they have struggled more
+or less blindly after explanation; determined not to desist till they
+had found it, and reaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes
+irrational and absurd to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest
+to the thoughtful.&nbsp; I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason
+why all great religions should be treated with respect, and in a certain
+sense preserved.&nbsp; It is nothing less than a wicked waste of accumulated
+human strivings to sneer them out of existence.&nbsp; They will be found,
+every one of them, to have incarnated certain vital doctrines which
+it has cost centuries of toil and devotion properly to appreciate.&nbsp;
+Especially is this true of the Catholic faith, and if it were worth
+while, it might be shown how it is nothing less than a divine casket
+of precious remedies, and if it is to be brutally broken, it will take
+ages to rediscover and restore them.&nbsp; Of one thing I am certain,
+that their rediscovery and restoration will be necessary.&nbsp; I cannot
+too earnestly insist upon the need of our holding, each man for himself,
+by some faith which shall anchor him.&nbsp; It must not be taken up
+by chance.&nbsp; We must fight for it, for only so will it become <i>our
+</i>faith.&nbsp; The halt in indifference or in hostility is easy enough
+and seductive enough.&nbsp; The half-hearted thinks that when he has
+attained that stage he has completed the term of human wisdom.&nbsp;
+I say go on: do not stay there; do not take it for granted that there
+is nothing beyond; incessantly attempt an advance, and at last a light,
+dim it may be, will arise.&nbsp; It will not be a completed system,
+perfect in all points, an answer to all our questions, but at least
+it will give ground for hope.<br>
+<br>
+We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death.&nbsp;
+I do not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to these
+great arguments against us.&nbsp; We never so much as sought for one,
+knowing how all men had sought and failed.&nbsp; But we were able to
+say there is some compensation, that there is another side, and this
+is all that man can say.&nbsp; No theory of the world is possible.&nbsp;
+The storm, the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening in
+cellars are obvious; but equally obvious are an evening in June, the
+delight of men and women in one another, in music, and in the exercise
+of thought.&nbsp; There can surely be no question that the sum of satisfaction
+is increasing, not merely in the gross but for each human being, as
+the earth from which we sprang is being worked out of the race, and
+a higher type is being developed.&nbsp; I may observe, too, that although
+it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed, that it is pure
+doubt which disturbs or depresses us.&nbsp; Simple suspense is in fact
+very rare, for there are few persons so constituted as to be able to
+remain in it.&nbsp; It is dogmatism under the cloak of doubt which pulls
+us down.&nbsp; It is the dogmatism of death, for example, which we have
+to avoid.&nbsp; The open grave is dogmatic, and we say <i>that man has
+gone</i>, but this is as much a transgression of the limits of certitude
+as if we were to say <i>he is an angel in bliss</i>.&nbsp; The proper
+attitude, the attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the reason
+is, <i>I do not know</i>; and in this there is an element of hope, now
+rising and now falling, but always sufficient to prevent that blank
+despair which we must feel if we consider it as settled that when we
+lie down under the grass there is an absolute end.<br>
+<br>
+The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immense
+help.&nbsp; No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon
+what lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses
+is loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic.&nbsp;
+The beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider
+it as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy,
+is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of
+the universe.&nbsp; Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjectures
+arise, shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot help believing
+as irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction - that the sphere of
+that understanding of ours, whose function it seems to be to imprison
+us, is limited.<br>
+<br>
+Going through a churchyard one afternoon I noticed that nearly all the
+people who were buried there, if the inscriptions on the tombstones
+might be taken to represent the thoughts of the departed when they were
+alive, had been intent solely on their own personal salvation.&nbsp;
+The question with them all seemed to have been, shall <i>I </i>go to
+heaven?&nbsp; Considering the tremendous difference between heaven and
+hell in the popular imagination, it was very natural that these poor
+creatures should be anxious above everything to know whether they would
+be in hell or heaven for ever.&nbsp; Surely, however, this is not the
+highest frame of mind, nor is it one to be encouraged.&nbsp; I would
+rather do all I can to get out of it, and to draw others out of it too.&nbsp;
+Our aim ought not so much to be the salvation of this poor petty self,
+but of that in me which alone makes it worth while to save me; of that
+alone which I hope will be saved, immortal truth.&nbsp; The very centre
+of the existence of the ordinary chapel-goer and church-goer needs to
+be shifted from self to what is outside self, and yet is truly self,
+and the sole truth of self.&nbsp; If the truth lives, <i>we </i>live,
+and if it dies, we are dead.&nbsp; Our theology stands in need of a
+reformation greater than that of Luther&rsquo;s.&nbsp; It may be said
+that the attempt to replace the care for self in us by a care for the
+universal is ridiculous.&nbsp; Man cannot rise to that height.&nbsp;
+I do not believe it.&nbsp; I believe we can rise to it.&nbsp; Every
+ordinary unselfish act is a proof of the capacity to rise to it; and
+the mother&rsquo;s denial of all care for her own happiness, if she
+can but make her child happy, is a sublime anticipation.&nbsp; It may
+be called an instinct, but in the course of time it will be possible
+to develop a wider instinct in us, so that our love for the truth shall
+be even maternally passionate and self-forgetting.<br>
+<br>
+After all our searching it was difficult to find anything which, in
+the case of a man like John the waiter, for example, could be of any
+service to him.&nbsp; At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in
+his case the problem presented itself in its simple nakedness.&nbsp;
+What comfort is there discoverable for the wretched which is not based
+upon illusion?&nbsp; We could not tell him that all he endured was right
+and proper.&nbsp; But even to him we were able to offer something.&nbsp;
+We did all we could to soothe him.&nbsp; On the Sunday, at least, he
+was able to find some relief from his labours, and he entered into a
+different region.&nbsp; He came to see us in the afternoon and evening
+occasionally, and brought his boy.&nbsp; Father and son were pulled
+up out of the vault, brought into the daylight, and led into an open
+expanse.&nbsp; We tried above everything to interest them, even in the
+smallest degree, in what is universal and impersonal, feeling that in
+that direction lies healing.&nbsp; We explained to the child as well
+as we could some morsels of science, and in explaining to him we explained
+to the father as well.&nbsp; When the anguish begotten by some outbreak
+on the part of the wife more violent than usual became almost too much
+to bear, we did our best to counsel, and as a last consolation we could
+point to Death, divine Death, and repose.&nbsp; It was but for a few
+more years at the utmost, and then must come a rest which no sorrow
+could invade.&nbsp; &ldquo;Having death as an ally, I do not tremble
+at shadows,&rdquo; is an immortal quotation from some unknown Greek
+author.&nbsp; Providence, too, by no miracle, came to our relief.&nbsp;
+The wife died, as it was foreseen she must, and that weight being removed,
+some elasticity and recoil developed itself.&nbsp; John&rsquo;s one
+thought now was for his child, and by means of the child the father
+passed out of himself, and connected himself with the future.&nbsp;
+The child did in fact teach the father exactly what we tried to teach,
+and taught it with a power of conviction which never could have been
+produced by any mere appeals to the reason.&nbsp; The father felt that
+he was battered, useless, and a failure, but that in the boy there were
+unknown possibilities, and that he might in after life say that it was
+to this battered, useless failure of a father he owed his success.&nbsp;
+There was nothing now that he would not do to help Tom&rsquo;s education,
+and we joyfully aided as best we could.&nbsp; So, partly I believe by
+us, but far more by nature herself, John&rsquo;s salvation was wrought
+out at least in a measure; discord by the intervention of another note
+resolved itself into a kind of harmony, and even through the skylight
+in the Strand a glimpse of the azure was obtained.<br>
+<br>
+I hope my readers, if I should ever have any, will remember that what
+I wish to do is to give some account of the manner in which we sought
+to be of service to the small and very humble circle of persons whom
+we had collected about us.&nbsp; I have preserved no record of anything;
+I am merely putting down what now comes into my mind - the two or three
+articles, not thirty-nine, nor, alas! a third of that number - which
+we were able to hold.&nbsp; I recollect one or two more which perhaps
+are worth preservation.&nbsp; In my younger days the aim of theologians
+was the justification of the ways of God to man.&nbsp; They could not
+succeed.&nbsp; They succeeded no better than ourselves in satisfying
+the intellect with a system.&nbsp; Nor does the Christian religion profess
+any such satisfaction.&nbsp; It teaches rather the great doctrine of
+a Remedy, of a Mediator; and therein it is profoundly true.&nbsp; It
+is unphilosophical in the sense that it offers no explanation from a
+single principle, and leaves the ultimate mystery as dark as before,
+but it is in accordance with our intuitions.&nbsp; Everywhere in nature
+we see exaction of penalties down to the uttermost farthing, but following
+after this we discern forgiveness, obliterating and restorative.&nbsp;
+Both tendencies exist.&nbsp; Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more so, for
+she visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; but there is in
+her also an infinite Pity, healing all wounds, softening all calamities,
+ever hastening to alleviate and repair.&nbsp; Christianity in strange
+historical fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of her into
+a biography and a creed.<br>
+<br>
+We endeavoured to follow Christianity in the depth of its distinction
+between right and wrong.&nbsp; Herein this religion is of priceless
+value.&nbsp; Philosophy proclaims the unity of our nature.&nbsp; To
+philosophy every passion is as natural as every act of saintlike negation,
+and one of the usual effects of thinking or philosophising is to bring
+together all that is apparently contrary in man, and to show how it
+proceeds really from one centre.&nbsp; But Christianity had not to propound
+a theory of man; it had to redeem the world.&nbsp; It laid awful stress
+on the duality in us, and the stress laid on that duality is the world&rsquo;s
+salvation.&nbsp; The words right and wrong are not felt now as they
+were felt by Paul.&nbsp; They shade off one into the other.&nbsp; Nevertheless,
+if mankind is not to be lost, the ancient antagonism must be maintained.&nbsp;
+The shallowest of mortals is able now to laugh at the notion of a personal
+devil.&nbsp; No doubt there is no such thing existent; but the horror
+at evil which could find no other expression than in the creation of
+a devil is no subject for laughter, and if it do not in some shape or
+other survive, the race itself will not survive.&nbsp; No religion,
+so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such profound earnestness
+on the bisection of man - on the distinction within him, vital to the
+very last degree, between the higher and the lower, heaven and hell.&nbsp;
+What utter folly is it because of an antique vesture to condemn as effete
+what the vesture clothes!&nbsp; Its doctrine and its sacred story are
+fixtures in concrete form of precious thoughts purchased by blood and
+tears.<br>
+<br>
+I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts.&nbsp;
+The theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say.&nbsp;
+I can only reply that we did our best.&nbsp; We said all we knew, and
+we would most thankfully have said more, had we been sure that it must
+be true.&nbsp; I would remind, too, those of our judges who think that
+we were such wretched mortals, blind leaders of the blind, that there
+have been long ages during which men never pretended to understand more
+than we professed to understand.&nbsp; To say nothing of the Jews, whose
+meagre system would certainly not have been thought either satisfying
+or orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and Romans lived in no
+clearer light than that which shines on me.&nbsp; The critics, too,
+will condemn because of our weakness; but this defect I at once concede.&nbsp;
+The severest critic could not possibly be so severe as I am upon myself.&nbsp;
+I <i>know </i>my failings.&nbsp; He, probably, would miss many of them.&nbsp;
+But, again I urge that men are not to be debarred by reason of weakness
+from doing what little good may lie within reach of their hands.&nbsp;
+Had we attempted to save scholars and thinkers we should have deserved
+the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be visited.&nbsp; We aspired
+to save nobody.&nbsp; We knew no salvation ourselves.&nbsp; We ventured
+humbly to bring a feeble ray of light into the dwellings of two or three
+poor men and women; and if Prometheus, fettered to his rock, dwelt with
+pride on the blind hopes which he had caused to visit mortals, the hopes
+which &ldquo;stopped the continued anticipation of their destiny,&rdquo;
+we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we thought that what we were
+doing was not altogether vanity.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER VII - QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+From time to time I received a newspaper from my native town, and one
+morning, looking over the advertisements, I caught sight of one which
+arrested me.&nbsp; It was as follows:-<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to little
+children.&nbsp; Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar,
+High Street.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen Butts, and that this was her
+advertisement I had not the slightest doubt.&nbsp; Suddenly, without
+being able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable desire
+to see her arose within me.&nbsp; I could not understand it.&nbsp; I
+recollected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour&rsquo;s story
+years ago.&nbsp; How true that counsel of Miss Arbour&rsquo;s was! and
+yet it had the defect of most counsel.&nbsp; It was but a principle;
+whether it suited this particular case was the one important point on
+which Miss Arbour was no authority.&nbsp; What <i>was </i>it which prompted
+this inexplicable emotion?&nbsp; A thousand things rushed through my
+head without reason or order.&nbsp; I begin to believe that a first
+love never dies.&nbsp; A boy falls in love at eighteen or nineteen.&nbsp;
+The attachment comes to nothing.&nbsp; It is broken off for a multitude
+of reasons, and he sees its absurdity.&nbsp; He marries afterwards some
+other woman whom he even adores, and he has children for whom he spends
+his life; yet in an obscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly
+the cherished picture of the girl who first was dear to him.&nbsp; She,
+too, marries.&nbsp; In process of time she is fifty years old, and he
+is fifty-two.&nbsp; He has not seen her for thirty years or more, but
+he continually turns aside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the
+face as it last appeared to him when he left her at her gate and saw
+her no more.&nbsp; He inquires now and then timidly about her whenever
+he gets the chance.&nbsp; And once in his life he goes down to the town
+where she lives, solely in order to get a sight of her without her knowing
+anything about it.&nbsp; He does not succeed, and he comes back and
+tells his wife, from whom he never conceals any secrets, that he has
+been away on business.&nbsp; I did not for a moment confess that my
+love for Ellen had returned.&nbsp; I knew who she was and what she was,
+and what had led to our separation; but nevertheless, all this obstinately
+remained in the background, and all the passages of love between us,
+all our kisses, and above everything, her tears at that parting in her
+father&rsquo;s house, thrust themselves upon me.&nbsp; It was a mystery
+to me.&nbsp; What should have induced that utterly unexpected resurrection
+of what I believed to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension.&nbsp;
+However, the fact remains.&nbsp; I did not to myself admit that this
+was love, but it <i>was </i>love, and that it should have shot up with
+such swift vitality merely because I had happened to see those initials
+was miraculous.&nbsp; I pretended to myself that I should like once
+more to see Mrs. Butts - perhaps she might be in want and I could help
+her.&nbsp; I shrank from writing to her or from making myself known
+to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient of answering her advertisement
+in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King&rsquo;s Arms
+hotel upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow lady to teach his
+children.&nbsp; To prevent any previous inquiries on her part, I said
+that my name was Williams, that I lived in the country at some little
+distance from the town, but that I should be there on business on the
+day named.&nbsp; I took up my quarters at the King&rsquo;s Arms the
+night before.&nbsp; It seemed very strange to be in an inn in the place
+in which I was born.&nbsp; I retired early to my bedroom, and looked
+out in the clear moonlight over the river.&nbsp; The landscape seemed
+haunted by ghosts of my former self.&nbsp; At one particular point,
+so well known, I stood fishing.&nbsp; At another, equally well known,
+where the water was dangerously deep, I was examining the ice; and round
+the corner was the boathouse where we kept the little craft in which
+I had voyaged so many hundreds of miles on excursions upwards beyond
+where the navigation ends, or, still more fascinating, down to where
+the water widens and sails are to be seen, and there is a foretaste
+of the distant sea.&nbsp; It is no pleasure to me to revisit scenes
+in which earlier days have been passed.&nbsp; I detest the sentimental
+melancholy which steals over me; the sense of the lapse of time, and
+the reflection that so many whom I knew are dead.&nbsp; I would always,
+if possible, spend my holiday in some new scene, fresh to me, and full
+of new interest.&nbsp; I slept but little, and when the morning came,
+instead of carrying out my purpose of wandering through the streets,
+I was so sick of the mood by which I had been helplessly overcome, that
+I sat at a distance from the window in the coffee-room, and read diligently
+last week&rsquo;s <i>Bell&rsquo;s Weekly Messenger</i>.&nbsp; My reading,
+however, was nothing.&nbsp; I do not suppose I comprehended the simplest
+paragraph.&nbsp; My thoughts were away, and I watched the clock slowly
+turning towards the hour when Ellen was to call.&nbsp; I foresaw that
+I should not be able to speak to her at the inn.&nbsp; If I have anything
+particular to say to anybody, I can always say it so much better out
+of doors.&nbsp; I dreaded the confinement of the room, and the necessity
+for looking into her face.&nbsp; Under the sky, and in motion, I should
+be more at liberty.&nbsp; At last eleven struck from the church in the
+square, and five minutes afterwards the waiter entered to announce Mrs.
+Butts.&nbsp; I was therefore right, and she was &ldquo;E. B.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I was sure that I should not be recognised.&nbsp; Since I saw her last
+I had grown a beard, my hair had got a little grey, and she was always
+a little short-sighted.&nbsp; She came in, and as she entered she put
+away over her bonnet her thick black veil.&nbsp; Not ten seconds passed
+before she was seated on the opposite side of the table to that on which
+I was sitting, but I re-read in her during those ten seconds the whole
+history of years.&nbsp; I cannot say that externally she looked worn
+or broken.&nbsp; I had imagined that I should see her undone with her
+great troubles, but to some extent, and yet not altogether, I was mistaken.&nbsp;
+The cheek-bones were more prominent than of old, and her dark-brown
+hair drawn tightly over her forehead increased the clear paleness of
+the face; the just perceptible tint of colour which I recollect being
+now altogether withdrawn.&nbsp; But she was not haggard, and evidently
+not vanquished.&nbsp; There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a
+trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind
+it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a
+final background, if not of joy, at least of resignation.&nbsp; Her
+ancient levity of manner had vanished, or at most had left nothing but
+a trace.&nbsp; I thought I detected it here and there in a line about
+the mouth, and perhaps in her walk.&nbsp; There was a reminiscence of
+it too in her clothes.&nbsp; Notwithstanding poverty and distress, the
+old neatness - that particular care which used to charm me so when I
+was little more than a child, was there still.&nbsp; I was always susceptible
+to this virtue, and delicate hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed
+thereon, were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty.&nbsp; I noticed
+that the gloves, though mended, fitted with the same precision, and
+that her dress was unwrinkled and perfectly graceful.&nbsp; Whatever
+she might have had to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred
+satisfaction which makes life tolerable.<br>
+<br>
+I was impelled at once to say that I had to beg her pardon for asking
+her there.&nbsp; Unfortunately I was obliged to go over to Cowston,
+a village which was about three miles from the town.&nbsp; Perhaps she
+would not mind walking part of the way with me through the meadows,
+and then we could talk with more freedom, as I should not feel pressed
+for time.&nbsp; To this arrangement she at once agreed, and dropping
+her thick veil over her face, we went out.&nbsp; In a few minutes we
+were clear of the houses, and I began the conversation.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Have you been in the habit of teaching?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;No.&nbsp; The necessity for taking to it has only lately arisen.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;What can you teach?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Not much beyond what children of ten or eleven years old are
+expected to know; but I could take charge of them entirely.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Have you any children of your own?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;One.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Could you take a situation as resident teacher if you have a
+child?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I must get something to do, and if I can make no arrangement
+by which my child can live with me, I shall try and place her with a
+friend.&nbsp; I may be able to hear of some appointment as a daily governess.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I should have thought that in your native town you would have
+been easily able to find employment - you must be well known?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+There was a pause, and after a moment or so she said:-<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;We were well known once, but we went abroad and lost all our
+money.&nbsp; My husband died abroad.&nbsp; When I returned, I found
+that there was very little which my friends could do for me.&nbsp; I
+am not accomplished, and there are crowds of young women who are more
+capable than I am.&nbsp; Moreover, I saw that I was becoming a burden,
+and people called on me rather as a matter of duty than for any other
+reason.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know how soon all but the very best insensibly
+neglect very poor relatives if they are not gifted or attractive.&nbsp;
+I do not wonder at being made to feel this, nor do I blame anybody.&nbsp;
+My little girl is a cripple, my rooms are dull, and I have nothing in
+me with which to amuse or entertain visitors.&nbsp; Pardon my going
+into this detail.&nbsp; It was necessary to say something in order to
+explain my position.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;May I ask what salary you will require if you live in the house?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Five-and-thirty pounds a year, but I might take less if I were
+asked to do so.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Are you a member of the Church of England?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;To what religious body do you belong?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am an Independent, but I would go to Church if my employers
+wished it.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I thought the Independents objected to go to Church.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They do; but I should not object, if I could hear anything at
+the Church which would help me.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am rather surprised at your indifference.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I was once more particular, but I have seen much suffering, and
+some things which were important to me are not so now, and others which
+were not important have become so.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I then made up a little story.&nbsp; My sister and I lived together.&nbsp;
+We were about to take up our abode at Cowston, but were as yet strangers
+to it.&nbsp; I was left a widower with two little children whom my sister
+could not educate, as she could not spare the time.&nbsp; She would
+naturally have selected the governess herself, but she was at some distance.&nbsp;
+She would like to see Mrs. Butts before engaging her finally, but she
+thought that as this advertisement presented itself, I might make some
+preliminary inquiries.&nbsp; Perhaps, however, now that Mrs. Butts knew
+the facts, she would object to living in the house.&nbsp; I put it in
+this way, feeling sure that she would catch my meaning.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am afraid that this situation will not suit me.&nbsp; I could
+not go backwards and forwards so far every day.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I understand you perfectly, and feared that this would be your
+decision.&nbsp; But if you hesitate, I can give you the best of references.&nbsp;
+I had not thought of that before.&nbsp; References of course will be
+required by you as well as by me.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I put my hand in my pocket for my pocket-book, but I could not find
+it.&nbsp; We had now reached a part of our road familiar enough to both
+of us.&nbsp; Along that very path Ellen and I had walked years ago.&nbsp;
+Under those very trees, on that very seat had we sat, and she and I
+were there again.&nbsp; All the old confidences, confessions, tendernesses,
+rushed upon me.&nbsp; What is there which is more potent than the recollection
+of past love to move us to love, and knit love with closest bonds?&nbsp;
+Can we ever cease to love the souls who have once shared all that we
+know and feel?&nbsp; Can we ever be indifferent to those who have our
+secrets, and whose secrets we hold?&nbsp; As I looked at her, I remembered
+what she knew about me, and what I knew about her, and this simple thought
+so overmastered me, that I could hold out no longer.&nbsp; I said to
+her that if she would like to rest for one moment, I might be able to
+find my papers.&nbsp; We sat down together, and she drew up her veil
+to read the address which I was about to give her.&nbsp; She glanced
+at me, as I thought, with a strange expression of excited interrogation,
+and something swiftly passed across her face, which warned me that I
+had not a moment to lose.&nbsp; I took out one of my own cards, handed
+it to her, and said, &ldquo;Here is a reference which perhaps you may
+know.&rdquo;&nbsp; She bent over it, turned to me, fixed her eyes intently
+and directly on mine for one moment, and then I thought she would have
+fallen.&nbsp; My arm was around her in an instant, her head was on my
+shoulder, and my many wanderings were over.&nbsp; It was broad, high,
+sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in those fields.&nbsp;
+We were roused by the distant sound of the town clock striking twelve;
+we rose and went on together to Cowston by the river bank, returning
+late in the evening.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER VIII - FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO TUO<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I suppose that the reason why in novels the story ends with a marriage
+is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and partly also
+because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career
+of life after it.&nbsp; The epoch once announced, nothing more need
+be explained; everything else follows as a matter of course.&nbsp; These
+notes of mine are autobiographical, and not a romance.&nbsp; I have
+never known much about epochs.&nbsp; I have had one or two, one specially
+when I first began to read and think; but after that, if I have changed,
+it has been slowly and imperceptibly.&nbsp; My life, therefore, is totally
+unfitted to be the basis of fiction.&nbsp; My return to Ellen, and our
+subsequent marriage, were only partially an epoch.&nbsp; A change had
+come, but it was one which had long been preparing.&nbsp; Ellen&rsquo;s
+experiences had altered her position, and mine too was altered.&nbsp;
+She had been driven into religion by trouble, and knowing nothing of
+criticism or philosophy, retained the old forms for her religious feeling.&nbsp;
+But the very quickness of her emotion caused her to welcome all new
+and living modes of expressing it.&nbsp; It is only when feeling has
+ceased to accompany a creed that it becomes fixed, and verbal departures
+from it are counted heresy.&nbsp; I too cared less for argument, and
+it even gave me pleasure to talk in her dialect, so familiar to me,
+but for so many years unused.<br>
+<br>
+It was now necessary for me to add to my income.&nbsp; I had nothing
+upon which to depend save my newspaper, which was obviously insufficient.&nbsp;
+At last, I succeeded in obtaining some clerical employment.&nbsp; For
+no other work was I fit, for my training had not been special in any
+one direction.&nbsp; My hours were long, from ten in the morning till
+seven in the evening, and as I was three miles distant from the office,
+I was really away from home for eleven hours every day, excepting on
+Sundays.&nbsp; I began to calculate that my life consisted of nothing
+but the brief spaces allowed to me for rest, and these brief spaces
+I could not enjoy because I dwelt upon their brevity.&nbsp; There was
+some excuse for me.&nbsp; Never could there be any duty incumbent upon
+man much more inhuman and devoid of interest than my own.&nbsp; How
+often I thought about my friend Clark, and his experiences became mine.&nbsp;
+The whole day I did nothing but write, and what I wrote called forth
+no single faculty of the mind.&nbsp; Nobody who has not tried such an
+occupation can possibly forecast the strange habits, humours, fancies,
+and diseases which after a time it breeds.&nbsp; I was shut up in a
+room half below the ground.&nbsp; In this room were three other men
+besides myself, two of them between fifty and sixty, and one about three
+or four-and-twenty.&nbsp; All four of us kept books or copied letters
+from ten to seven, with an interval of three-quarters of an hour for
+dinner.&nbsp; In all three of these men, as in the case of Clark&rsquo;s
+companions, there had been developed, partly I suppose by the circumstance
+of enforced idleness of brain, the most loathsome tendency to obscenity.&nbsp;
+This was the one subject which was common ground, and upon which they
+could talk.&nbsp; It was fostered too by a passion for beer, which was
+supplied by the publican across the way, who was perpetually travelling
+to and fro with cans.&nbsp; My horror when I first found out into what
+society I was thrust was unspeakable.&nbsp; There was a clock within
+a hundred yards of my window which struck the hours and quarters.&nbsp;
+How I watched that clock!&nbsp; My spirits rose or fell with each division
+of the day.&nbsp; From ten to twelve there was nothing but gloom.&nbsp;
+By half-past twelve I began to discern dinner time, and the prospect
+was brighter.&nbsp; After dinner there was nothing to be done but doggedly
+to endure until five, and at five I was able to see over the distance
+from five to seven.&nbsp; My disgust at my companions, however, came
+to be mixed with pity.&nbsp; I found none of them cruel, and I received
+many little kindnesses from them.&nbsp; I discovered that their trade
+was largely answerable for the impurity of thought and speech which
+so shocked me.&nbsp; Its monotony compelled some countervailing stimulus,
+and as they had never been educated to care for anything in particular,
+they found the necessary relief in sensuality.&nbsp; At first they &ldquo;chaffed&rdquo;
+and worried me a good deal because of my silence, but at last they began
+to think I was &ldquo;religious,&rdquo; and then they ceased to torment
+me.&nbsp; I rather encouraged them in the belief that I had a right
+to exemption from their conversation, and I passed, I believe, for a
+Plymouth brother.&nbsp; The only thing which they could not comprehend
+was that I made no attempt to convert them.<br>
+<br>
+The whole establishment was under the rule of a deputy-manager, who
+was the terror of the place.&nbsp; He was tall, thin, and suffered occasionally
+from spitting of blood, brought on no doubt from excitement.&nbsp; He
+was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion.&nbsp; He had complete
+mastery over every detail of the business, and he never blundered.&nbsp;
+All his work was thorough, down to the very bottom, and he had the most
+intolerant hatred of everything which was loose and inaccurate.&nbsp;
+He never passed a day without flaming out into oaths and curses against
+his subordinates, and they could not say in his wildest fury that his
+ravings were beside the mark.&nbsp; He was wrong in his treatment of
+men - utterly wrong - but his facts were always correct.&nbsp; I never
+saw anybody hated as he was, and the hatred against him was the more
+intense because nobody could convict him of a mistake.&nbsp; He seemed
+to enjoy a storm, and knew nothing whatever of the constraints which
+with ordinary men prevent abusive and brutal language to those around
+them.&nbsp; Some of his clerks suffered greatly from him, and he almost
+broke down two or three from the constant nervous strain upon them produced
+by fear of his explosions.&nbsp; For my own part, although I came in
+for a full share of his temper, I at once made up my mind as soon as
+I discovered what he was, not to open my lips to him except under compulsion.&nbsp;
+My one object now was to get a living.&nbsp; I wished also to avoid
+the self-mortification which must ensue from altercation.&nbsp; I dreaded,
+as I have always dreaded beyond what I can tell, the chaos and wreck
+which, with me, follows subjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve
+under all provocation.&nbsp; It was very difficult, but how many times
+I have blessed myself for adhesion to it.&nbsp; Instead of going home
+undone with excitement, and trembling with fear of dismissal, I have
+walked out of my dungeon having had to bite my lips till the blood came,
+but still conqueror, and with peace of mind.<br>
+<br>
+Another stratagem of defence which I adopted at the office was never
+to betray to a soul anything about myself.&nbsp; Nobody knew anything
+about me, whether I was married or single, where I lived, or what I
+thought upon a single subject of any importance.&nbsp; I cut off my
+office life in this way from my life at home so completely that I was
+two selves, and my true self was not stained by contact with my other
+self.&nbsp; It was a comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck
+seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered nothing
+by having anything to do with it.&nbsp; I was not the person who sat
+at the desk downstairs and endured the abominable talk of his colleagues
+and the ignominy of serving such a chief.&nbsp; I knew nothing about
+him.&nbsp; I was a citizen walking London streets; I had my opinions
+upon human beings and books; I was on equal terms with my friends; I
+was Ellen&rsquo;s husband; I was, in short, a man.&nbsp; By this scrupulous
+isolation, I preserved myself, and the clerk was not debarred from the
+domain of freedom.<br>
+<br>
+It is very terrible to think that the labour by which men are to live
+should be of this order.&nbsp; The ideal of labour is that it should
+be something in which we can take an interest and even a pride.&nbsp;
+Immense masses of it in London are the merest slavery, and it is as
+mechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus horse.&nbsp; There is
+no possibility of relieving it, and all the ordinary copybook advice
+of moralists and poets as to the temper in which we should earn our
+bread is childish nonsense.&nbsp; If a man is a painter, or a physician,
+or a barrister, or even a tradesman, well and good.&nbsp; The maxims
+of authors may be of some service to him, and he may be able to exemplify
+them; but if he is a copying clerk they are an insult, and he can do
+nothing but arch his back to bear his burden and find some compensation
+elsewhere.&nbsp; True it is, that beneficent Nature here, as always,
+is helpful.&nbsp; Habit, after a while, mitigated much of the bitterness
+of destiny.&nbsp; The hard points of the flint became smoothed and worn
+away by perpetual tramping over them, so that they no longer wounded
+with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot was in time
+provided with a merciful callosity.&nbsp; Then, too, there was developed
+an appetite which was voracious for all that was best.&nbsp; Who shall
+tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never have known
+had I lived a life of idleness!&nbsp; Ellen was fond of hearing me read,
+and with a little care I was able to select what would bear reading
+- dramas, for example.&nbsp; She liked the reading for the reading&rsquo;s
+sake, and she liked to know that what I thought was communicated to
+her; that she was not excluded from the sphere in which I lived.&nbsp;
+Of the office she never heard a word, and I never would tell her anything
+about it; but there was scarcely a single book in my possession which
+could be read aloud, that we did not go through together in this way.&nbsp;
+I don&rsquo;t prescribe this kind of life to everybody.&nbsp; Some of
+my best friends, I know, would find it intolerable, but it suited us.&nbsp;
+Philosophy and religion I did not touch.&nbsp; It was necessary to choose
+themes with varying human interest, such as the best works of fiction,
+a play, or a poem; and these perhaps, on the whole, did me more good
+at that time than speculation.&nbsp; Oh, how many times have I left
+my office humiliated by some silently endured outbreak on the part of
+my master, more galling because I could not put it aside as altogether
+gratuitous; and in less than an hour it was two miles away, and I was
+myself again.&nbsp; If a man wants to know what the potency of love
+is, he must be a menial; he must be despised.&nbsp; Those who are prosperous
+and courted cannot understand its power.&nbsp; Let him come home after
+he has suffered what is far worse than hatred - the contempt of a superior,
+who knows that he can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he can
+replace his slave at a moment&rsquo;s notice.&nbsp; Let him be trained
+by his tyrant to dwell upon the thought that he belongs to the vast
+crowd of people in London who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom
+it is a charity to offer employment; who are conscious of possessing
+no gift which makes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend
+the divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear.&nbsp;
+God&rsquo;s mercy be praised ever more for it!&nbsp; I cannot write
+poetry, but if I could, no theme would tempt me like that of love to
+such a person as I was - not love, as I say again, to the hero, but
+love to the Helot.&nbsp; Over and over again, when I have thought about
+it, I have felt my poor heart swell with a kind of uncontrollable fervour.&nbsp;
+I have often, too, said to myself that this love is no delusion.&nbsp;
+If we were to set it down as nothing more than a merciful cheat on the
+part of the Creator, however pleasant it might be, it would lose its
+charm.&nbsp; If I were to think that my wife&rsquo;s devotion to me
+is nothing more than the simple expression of a necessity to love somebody,
+that there is nothing in me which justifies such devotion, I should
+be miserable.&nbsp; Rather, I take it, is the love of woman to man a
+revelation of the relationship in which God stands to him - of what
+<i>ought </i>to be, in fact.&nbsp; In the love of a woman to the man
+who is of no account God has provided us with a true testimony of what
+is in His own heart.&nbsp; I often felt this when looking at myself
+and at Ellen.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is there in me?&rdquo; I have said,
+&ldquo;is she not the victim of some self-created deception?&rdquo;
+and I was wretched till I considered that in her I saw the Divine Nature
+itself, and that her passion was a stream straight from the Highest.&nbsp;
+The love of woman is, in other words, a living witness never failing
+of an actuality in God which otherwise we should never know.&nbsp; This
+led me on to connect it with Christianity; but I am getting incoherent
+and must stop.<br>
+<br>
+My employment now was so incessant, for it was still necessary that
+I should write for my newspaper - although my visits to the House of
+Commons had perforce ceased - that I had no time for any schemes or
+dreams such as those which had tormented me when I had more leisure.&nbsp;
+In one respect this was a blessing.&nbsp; Destiny now had prescribed
+for me.&nbsp; I was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought
+to do.&nbsp; My present duty was obviously to get my own living, and
+having got that, I could do little besides save continue the Sundays
+with M&rsquo;Kay.<br>
+<br>
+We were almost entirely alone.&nbsp; We had no means of making any friends.&nbsp;
+We had no money, and no gifts of any kind.&nbsp; We were neither of
+us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what
+it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with persons who
+thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a twopenny omnibus
+fare.&nbsp; Certain it is, that we went out of our way sometimes to
+induce people to call upon us whom we thought we should like; but, if
+they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw no
+more of them.&nbsp; This behaviour was so universal that, without the
+least affectation, I acknowledge there must be something repellent in
+me, but what it is I cannot tell.&nbsp; That Ellen was the cause of
+the general aversion, it is impossible to believe.&nbsp; The only theory
+I have is, that partly owing to a constant sense of fatigue, due to
+imperfect health, and partly to chafing irritation at mere gossip, although
+I had no power to think of anything better, or say anything better myself,
+I was avoided both by the commonplace and those who had talent.&nbsp;
+Commonplace persons avoided me because I did not chatter, and persons
+of talent because I stood for nothing.&nbsp; &ldquo;There was nothing
+in me.&rdquo;&nbsp; We met at M&rsquo;Kay&rsquo;s two gentlemen whom
+we thought we might invite to our house.&nbsp; One of them was an antiquarian.&nbsp;
+He had discovered in an excavation in London some Roman remains.&nbsp;
+This had led him on to the study of the position and boundaries of the
+Roman city.&nbsp; He had become an authority upon this subject, and
+had lectured upon it.&nbsp; He came; but as we were utterly ignorant,
+and could not, with all our efforts, manifest any sympathy which he
+valued at the worth of a pin, he soon departed, and departed for ever.&nbsp;
+The second was a student of Elizabethan literature, and I rashly concluded
+at once that he must be most delightful.&nbsp; He likewise came.&nbsp;
+I showed him my few poor books, which he condemned, and I found that
+such observations as I could make he considered as mere twaddle.&nbsp;
+I knew nothing, or next to nothing, about the editions or the curiosities,
+or the proposed emendations of obscure passages, and he, too, departed
+abruptly.&nbsp; I began to think after he had gone that my study of
+Shakespeare was mere dilettantism but I afterwards came to the conclusion
+that if a man wishes to spoil himself for Shakespeare, the best thing
+he can do is to turn Shakespearian critic.<br>
+<br>
+My worst enemy at this time was ill health, and it was more distressing
+than it otherwise would have been, because I had such responsibilities
+upon me.&nbsp; When I lived alone I knew that if anything should happen
+to me it would be of no particular consequence, but now whenever I felt
+sick I was anxious on account of Ellen.&nbsp; What would become of her
+- this was the thought which kept me awake night after night when the
+terrors of depression were upon me, as they often were.&nbsp; But still,
+terrors with growing years had lost their ancient strength.&nbsp; My
+brain and nerves were quiet compared with what they were in times gone
+by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson which is taught by
+familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful in
+it lies in the imagination.&nbsp; The true Gorgon head is seldom seen
+in reality.&nbsp; That it exists I do not doubt, but it is not so commonly
+visible as we think.&nbsp; Again, as we get older we find that all life
+is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we walk courageously
+on.&nbsp; The labourer marries and has children, when there is nothing
+but his own strength between him and ruin.&nbsp; A million chances are
+encountered every day, and any one of the million accidents which might
+happen would cripple him or kill him, and put into the workhouse those
+who depend upon him.&nbsp; Yet he treads his path undisturbed.&nbsp;
+Life to all of us is a narrow plank placed across a gulf, which yawns
+on either side, and if we were perpetually looking down into it we should
+fall.&nbsp; So at last, the possibility of disaster ceased to affright
+me.&nbsp; I had been brought off safely so many times when destruction
+seemed imminent, that I grew hardened, and lay down quietly at night,
+although the whim of a madman might to-morrow cast me on the pavement.&nbsp;
+Frequently, as I have said, I could not do this, but I strove to do
+it, and was able to do it when in health.<br>
+<br>
+I tried to think about nothing which expressed whatever in the world
+may be insoluble or simply tragic.&nbsp; A great change is just beginning
+to come over us in this respect.&nbsp; So many books I find are written
+which aim merely at new presentation of the hopeless.&nbsp; The contradictions
+of fate, the darkness of death, the fleeting of man over this brief
+stage of existence, whence we know not, and whither we know not, are
+favourite subjects with writers who seem to think that they are profound,
+because they can propose questions which cannot be answered.&nbsp; There
+is really more strength of mind required for resolving the commonest
+difficulty than is necessary for the production of poems on these topics.&nbsp;
+The characteristic of so much that is said and written now is melancholy;
+and it is melancholy, not because of any deeper acquaintance with the
+secrets of man than that which was possessed by our forefathers, but
+because it is easy to be melancholy, and the time lacks strength.<br>
+<br>
+As I am now setting down, without much order or connection, the lessons
+which I had to learn, I may perhaps be excused if I add one or two others.&nbsp;
+I can say of them all, that they are not book lessons.&nbsp; They have
+been taught me by my own experience, and as a rule I have always found
+that in my own most special perplexities I got but little help from
+books or other persons.&nbsp; I had to find out for myself what was
+for me the proper way of dealing with them.<br>
+<br>
+My love for Ellen was great, but I discovered that even such love as
+this could not be left to itself.&nbsp; It wanted perpetual cherishing.&nbsp;
+The lamp, if it was to burn brightly, required daily trimming, for people
+became estranged and indifferent, not so much by open quarrel or serious
+difference, as by the intervention of trifles which need but the smallest,
+although continuous effort for their removal.&nbsp; The true wisdom
+is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at once.&nbsp; Love,
+too, requires that the two persons who love one another shall constantly
+present to one another what is best in them, and to accomplish this,
+deliberate purpose, and even struggle, are necessary.&nbsp; If through
+relapse into idleness we do not attempt to bring soul and heart into
+active communion day by day, what wonder if this once exalted relationship
+become vulgar and mean?<br>
+<br>
+I was much overworked.&nbsp; It was not the work itself which was such
+a trial, but the time it consumed.&nbsp; At best, I had but a clear
+space of an hour, or an hour and a half at home, and to slave merely
+for this seemed such a mockery!&nbsp; Day after day sped swiftly by,
+made up of nothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself
+- Is this life?&nbsp; But I made up my mind that <i>never would I give
+myself tongue</i>.&nbsp; I clapped a muzzle on my mouth.&nbsp; Had I
+followed my own natural bent, I should have become expressive about
+what I had to endure, but I found that expression reacts on him who
+expresses and intensifies what is expressed.&nbsp; If we break out into
+rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the easier, but the worse
+to be borne.<br>
+<br>
+I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward from the present moment
+to one beyond.&nbsp; The whole week seemed to exist for the Sunday.&nbsp;
+On Monday morning I began counting the hours till Sunday should arrive.&nbsp;
+The consequence was, that when it came, it was not enjoyed properly,
+and I wasted it in noting the swiftness of its flight.&nbsp; Oh, how
+absurd is man!&nbsp; If we were to reckon up all the moments which we
+really enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them to be!&nbsp;
+The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our lives is spent in dreaming
+over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed in the anticipation
+of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave.&nbsp;
+This tendency, unconquerable though it may appear to be, can to a great
+extent at any rate, be overcome by strenuous discipline.&nbsp; I tried
+to blind myself to the future, and many and many a time, as I walked
+along that dreary New Road or Old St. Pancras Road, have I striven to
+compel myself not to look at the image of Hampstead Heath or Regent&rsquo;s
+Park, as yet six days in front of me, but to get what I could out of
+what was then with me.<br>
+<br>
+The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare what we are with
+what we might be is no doubt of enormous value, and is the spring which
+prompts all action, but, like every instinct, it is the source of greatest
+danger.&nbsp; I remember the day and the very spot on which it flashed
+into me, like a sudden burst of the sun&rsquo;s rays, that I had no
+right to this or that - to so much happiness, or even so much virtue.&nbsp;
+What title-deeds could I show for such a right?&nbsp; Straightway it
+seemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction were removed,
+and as if the system collapsed.&nbsp; God, creating from His infinite
+resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with a definite
+position on the scale, and that position only could I claim.&nbsp; Cease
+the trick of contrast.&nbsp; If I can by any means get myself to consider
+myself alone without reference to others, discontent will vanish.&nbsp;
+I walk this Old St. Pancras Road on foot - another rides.&nbsp; Keep
+out of view him who rides and all persons riding, and I shall not complain
+that I tramp in the wet.&nbsp; So also when I think how small and weak
+I am.<br>
+<br>
+How foolish it is to try and cure by argument what time will cure so
+completely and so gently if left to itself.&nbsp; As I get older, the
+anxiety to prove myself right if I quarrel dies out.&nbsp; I hold my
+tongue and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate me, or
+convicts me if I am wrong.&nbsp; Many and many a debate too which I
+have had with myself alone has been settled in the same way.&nbsp; The
+question has been put aside and has lost its importance.&nbsp; The ancient
+Church thought, and seriously enough, no doubt, that all the vital interests
+of humanity were bound up with the controversies upon the Divine nature;
+but the centuries have rolled on, and who cares for those controversies
+now.&nbsp; The problems of death and immortality once upon a time haunted
+me so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them.&nbsp; I cannot
+tell how, but so it is, that at the present moment, when I am years
+nearer the end, they trouble me but very little.&nbsp; If I could but
+bury and let rot things which torment me and come to no settlement -
+if I could always do this - what a blessing it would be.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHAPTER IX - HOLIDAYS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I have said that Ellen had a child by her first husband.&nbsp; Marie,
+for that was her name, was now ten years old.&nbsp; She was like neither
+her mother nor father, and yet was <i>shot </i>as it were with strange
+gleams which reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and
+then disappeared.&nbsp; She had rather coarse dark hair, small black
+eyes, round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose in
+particular being so.&nbsp; She had a tendency to be stout.&nbsp; For
+books she did not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught
+her to read.&nbsp; She was not orderly or careful about her person,
+and in this respect was a sore disappointment - not that she was positively
+careless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and
+her wardrobe neat.&nbsp; She was fond of bright colours, which was another
+trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness.&nbsp; She was
+not by any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of expressing
+herself upon persons and things.&nbsp; A stranger looking at her would
+perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, and dull.&nbsp;
+She was neither one nor the other.&nbsp; She ate little, although she
+was fond of sweets.&nbsp; Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut
+outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable
+of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable,
+it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she
+suffered to explode.&nbsp; I remember once when she was a little mite
+she was asked out somewhere to tea.&nbsp; She was dressed and ready,
+but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go.&nbsp;
+She besought, but it was in vain.&nbsp; We could not afford cabs, and
+there was no omnibus.&nbsp; Marie, finding all her entreaties were useless,
+quietly walked out of the room; and after some little time her mother,
+calling her and finding she did not come, went to look for her.&nbsp;
+She had gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there in the rain by
+the side of the water-butt.&nbsp; She was soaked, and her best clothes
+were spoiled.&nbsp; I must confess that I did not take very kindly to
+her.&nbsp; I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, in fact,
+painful to be obliged to teach her.&nbsp; I thought that perhaps she
+might have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, and
+our attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies were a failure.&nbsp;
+She was more or less of a locked cabinet to me.&nbsp; I tried her with
+the two or three keys which I had, but finding that none of them fitted,
+I took no more pains about her.<br>
+<br>
+One Sunday we determined upon a holiday.&nbsp; It was a bold adventure
+for us, but we had made up our minds.&nbsp; There was an excursion train
+to Hastings, and accordingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were at London
+Bridge Station early in the morning.&nbsp; It was a lovely summer&rsquo;s
+day in mid-July.&nbsp; The journey down was uncomfortable enough in
+consequence of the heat and dust, but we heeded neither one nor the
+other in the hope of seeing the sea.&nbsp; We reached Hastings at about
+eleven o&rsquo;clock, and strolled westwards towards Bexhill.&nbsp;
+Our pleasure was exquisite.&nbsp; Who can tell, save the imprisoned
+Londoner, the joy of walking on the clean sea-sand!&nbsp; What a delight
+that was, to say nothing of the beauty of the scenery!&nbsp; To be free
+of the litter and filth of a London suburb, of its broken hedges, its
+brickbats, its torn advertisements, its worn and trampled grass in fields
+half given over to the speculative builder: in place of this, to tread
+the immaculate shore over which breathed a wind not charged with soot;
+to replace the dull, shrouding obscurity of the smoke by a distance
+so distinct that the masts of the ships whose hulls were buried below
+the horizon were visible - all this was perfect bliss.&nbsp; It was
+not very poetic bliss, perhaps; but nevertheless it is a fact that the
+cleanness of the sea and the sea air was as attractive to us as any
+of the sea attributes.&nbsp; We had a wonderful time.&nbsp; Only in
+the country is it possible to note the change of morning into mid-day,
+of mid-day into afternoon, and of afternoon into evening; and it is
+only in the country, therefore, that a day seems stretched out into
+its proper length.&nbsp; We had brought all our food with us, and sat
+upon the shore in the shadow of a piece of the cliff.&nbsp; A row of
+heavy white clouds lay along the horizon almost unchangeable and immovable,
+with their summit-lines and the part of the mass just below them steeped
+in sunlight.&nbsp; The level opaline water differed only from a floor
+by a scarcely perceptible heaving motion, which broke into the faintest
+of ripples at our feet.&nbsp; So still was the great ocean, so quietly
+did everything lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach were
+as pure and bright as if they were a part of the mid-ocean depths.&nbsp;
+About a mile from us, at one o&rsquo;clock, a long row of porpoises
+appeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for half-an-hour or
+so, till they went out farther to sea off Fairlight.&nbsp; Some fishing-boats
+were becalmed just in front of us.&nbsp; Their shadows slept, or almost
+slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone showing that it was
+not complete sleep, or if sleep, that it was sleep with dreams.&nbsp;
+The intensity of the sunlight sharpened the outlines of every little
+piece of rock, and of the pebbles, in a manner which seemed supernatural
+to us Londoners.&nbsp; In London we get the heat of the sun, but not
+his light, and the separation of individual parts into such vivid isolation
+was so surprising that even Marie noticed it, and said it &ldquo;all
+seemed as if she were looking through a glass.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was perfect
+- perfect in its beauty - and perfect because, from the sun in the heavens
+down to the fly with burnished wings on the hot rock, there was nothing
+out of harmony.&nbsp; Everything breathed one spirit.&nbsp; Marie played
+near us; Ellen and I sat still, doing nothing.&nbsp; We wanted nothing,
+we had nothing to achieve; there were no curiosities to be seen, there
+was no particular place to be reached, no &ldquo;plan of operations,&rdquo;
+and London was forgotten for the time.&nbsp; It lay behind us in the
+north-west, and the cliff was at the back of us shutting out all thought
+of it.&nbsp; No reminiscences and no anticipations disturbed us; the
+present was sufficient, and occupied us totally.<br>
+<br>
+I should like, if I could, to write an essay upon the art of enjoying
+a holiday.&nbsp; It is sad to think how few people know how to enjoy
+one, although they are so precious.&nbsp; We do not sufficiently consider
+that enjoyment of every kind is an art carefully to be learnt, and specially
+the art of making the most of a brief space set apart for pleasure.&nbsp;
+It is foolish, for example, if a man, city bred, has but twelve hours
+before him, to spend more of it in eating and drinking than is necessary.&nbsp;
+Eating and drinking produce stupidity, at least in some degree, which
+may just as well be reserved for town.&nbsp; It is foolish also to load
+the twelve hours with a task - so much to be done.&nbsp; The sick person
+may perhaps want exercise, but to the tolerably healthy the best of
+all recreation is the freedom from fetters even when they are self-imposed.<br>
+<br>
+Our train homewards was due at Bexhill a little after seven.&nbsp; By
+five o&rsquo;clock a change gradual but swift was observed.&nbsp; The
+clouds which had charmed us all through the morning and afternoon were
+in reality thunder-clouds, which woke up like a surprised army under
+perfect discipline, and moved magnificently towards us.&nbsp; Already
+afar off we heard the softened echoing roll of the thunder.&nbsp; Every
+now and then we saw a sharp thrust of lightning down into the water,
+and shuddered when we thought that perhaps underneath that stab there
+might be a ship with living men.&nbsp; The battle at first was at such
+a distance that we watched it with intense and solemn delight.&nbsp;
+As yet not a breath of air stirred, but presently, over in the south-east,
+a dark ruffled patch appeared on the horizon, and we agreed that it
+was time to go.&nbsp; The indistinguishable continuous growl now became
+articulated into distinct crashes.&nbsp; I had miscalculated the distance
+to the station, and before we got there the rain, skirmishing in advance,
+was upon us.&nbsp; We took shelter in a cottage for a moment in order
+that Ellen might get a glass of water - bad-looking stuff it was, but
+she was very thirsty - and put on her cloak.&nbsp; We then started again
+on our way.&nbsp; We reached the station at about half-past six, before
+the thunder was overhead, but not before Ellen had got wet, despite
+all my efforts to protect her.&nbsp; She was also very hot from hurrying,
+and yet there was nothing to be done but to sit in a kind of covered
+shed till the train came up.&nbsp; The thunder and lightning were, however,
+so tremendous, that we thought of nothing else.&nbsp; When they were
+at their worst, the lightning looked like the upset of a cauldron of
+white glowing metal - with such strength, breadth, and volume did it
+descend.&nbsp; Just as the train arrived, the roar began to abate, and
+in about half-an-hour it had passed over to the north, leaving behind
+the rain, cold and continuous, which fell all round us from a dark,
+heavy, grey sky.&nbsp; The carnage in which we were was a third-class,
+with seats arranged parallel to the sides.&nbsp; It was crowded, and
+we were obliged to sit in the middle, exposed to the draught which the
+tobacco smoke made necessary.&nbsp; Some of the company were noisy,
+and before we got to Red Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks which
+had been well filled at Hastings began to work.&nbsp; Many were drenched,
+and this was an excuse for much of the drinking; although for that matter,
+any excuse or none is generally sufficient.&nbsp; At Red Hill we were
+stopped by other trains, and before we came to Croydon we were an hour
+late.&nbsp; We had now become intolerably weary.&nbsp; The songs were
+disgusting, and some of the women who were with the men had also been
+drinking, and behaved in a manner which it was not pleasant that Ellen
+and Marie should see.&nbsp; The carriage was lighted fortunately by
+one dim lamp only which hung in the middle, and I succeeded at last
+in getting seats at the further end, where there was a knot of more
+decent persons who had huddled up there away from the others.&nbsp;
+All the glory of the morning was forgotten.&nbsp; Instead of three happy,
+exalted creatures, we were three dejected, shivering mortals, half poisoned
+with foul air and the smell of spirits.&nbsp; We crawled up to London
+Bridge at the slowest pace, and, finally, the railway company discharged
+us on the platform at ten minutes past eleven.&nbsp; Not a place in
+any omnibus could be secured, and we therefore walked for a mile or
+so till I saw a cab, which - unheard-of expense for me - I engaged,
+and we were landed at our own house exactly at half-past twelve.&nbsp;
+The first thing to be done was to get Marie to bed.&nbsp; She was instantly
+asleep, and was none the worse for her journey.&nbsp; With Ellen the
+case was different.&nbsp; She could not sleep, and the next morning
+was feverish.&nbsp; She insisted that it was nothing more than a bad
+cold, and would on no account permit me even to give her any medicine.&nbsp;
+She would get up presently, and she and Marie could get on well enough
+together.&nbsp; But when I reached home on Monday evening, Ellen was
+worse, and was still in bed.<br>
+<br>
+I sent at once for the doctor, who would give no opinion for a day or
+two, but meanwhile directed that she was to remain where she was, and
+take nothing but the lightest food.&nbsp; Tuesday night passed, and
+the fever still increased.&nbsp; I had become very anxious, but I dared
+not stay with her, for I knew not what might happen if I were absent
+from my work.&nbsp; I was obliged to try and think of somebody who would
+come and help us.&nbsp; Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal-porter
+at Somerset House, came into my mind.&nbsp; He, as I have said when
+talking about him, was married, but had no children.&nbsp; To him accordingly
+I went.&nbsp; I never shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted
+his wife to go, and with which she consented.&nbsp; I was shut up in
+my own sufferings, but I remember a flash of joy that all our efforts
+in our room had not been in vain.&nbsp; I was delighted that I had secured
+assistance, but I do believe the uppermost thought was delight that
+we had been able to develop gratitude and affection.&nbsp; Mrs. Taylor
+was an &ldquo;ordinary woman.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was about fifty, rather
+stout, and entirely uneducated.&nbsp; But when she took charge at our
+house, all her best qualities found expression.&nbsp; It is true enough,
+<i>omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset</i>, but it is equally
+true that under the pressure of trial and responsibility we are often
+stronger than when there is no pressure.&nbsp; Many a man will acknowledge
+that in difficulty he has surprised himself by a resource and coolness
+which he never suspected before.&nbsp; Mrs. Taylor I always thought
+to be rather weak and untrustworthy, but I found that when <i>weight
+</i>was placed upon her, she was steady as a rock, a systematic and
+a perfect manager.&nbsp; There was no doubt in a very short time as
+to the nature of the disease.&nbsp; It was typhoid fever, the cause
+probably being the impure water drunk as we were coming home.&nbsp;
+I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered.&nbsp; Suffice it to
+say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watching her every minute
+night and day, and administering small quantities of milk.&nbsp; Her
+prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without the most constant
+attention she might at any moment have slipped out of our hands.&nbsp;
+I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polar country, whose existence
+depends upon one spark of fire, which he tries to cherish, left glimmering
+in a handful of ashes.&nbsp; Oh those days, prolonged to weeks, during
+which that dreadful struggle lasted - days swallowed up with one sole,
+intense, hungry desire that her life might be spared! - days filled
+with a forecast of the blackness and despair before me if she should
+depart.&nbsp; I tried to obtain release from the office.&nbsp; The answer
+was that nobody could of course prevent my being away, but that it was
+not usual for a clerk to be absent merely because his wife was not well.&nbsp;
+The brute added with a sneer that a wife was &ldquo;a luxury&rdquo;
+which he should have thought I could hardly afford.&nbsp; We divided
+between us, however, at home the twenty-four hours during which we stood
+sentinels against death, and occasionally we were relieved by one or
+two friends.&nbsp; I went on duty from about eight in the evening till
+one in the morning, and was then relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained
+till ten or eleven.&nbsp; She then went to bed, and was replaced by
+little Marie.&nbsp; What a change came over that child!&nbsp; I was
+amazed at her.&nbsp; All at once she seemed to have found what she was
+born to do.&nbsp; The key had been discovered, which unlocked and revealed
+what there was in her, of which hitherto I had been altogether unaware.&nbsp;
+Although she was so little, she became a perfect nurse.&nbsp; Her levity
+disappeared; she was grave as a matron, moved about as if shod in felt,
+never forgot a single direction, and gave proper and womanly answers
+to strangers who called.&nbsp; Faculties unsuspected grew almost to
+full height in a single day.&nbsp; Never did she relax during the whole
+of that dreadful time, or show the slightest sign of discontent.&nbsp;
+She sat by her mother&rsquo;s side, intent, vigilant; and she had her
+little dinner prepared and taken up into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor
+before she went to bed.&nbsp; I remember once going to her cot in the
+night, as she lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with
+remorse and thankfulness - remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity,
+had judged her so superficially; and thankfulness, that it had pleased
+God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace.&nbsp; Fool that
+I was, not to be aware that messages from Him are not to be read through
+the envelope in which they are enclosed.&nbsp; I never should have believed,
+if it had not been for Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a
+child.&nbsp; Such love, I should have said, was only possible between
+man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man.&nbsp; But now I doubt
+whether a love of that particular kind could be felt towards any grown-up
+human being, love so pure, so imperious, so awful.&nbsp; My love to
+Marie was love of God Himself as He is - an unrestrained adoration of
+an efflux from Him, adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation
+had clothed itself with a child&rsquo;s form.&nbsp; It was, as I say,
+the love of God as He is.&nbsp; It was not necessary, as it so often
+is necessary, to qualify, to subtract, to consider the other side, to
+deplore the obscurity or the earthly contamination with which the Word
+is delivered to us.&nbsp; This was the Word itself, without even consciousness
+on the part of the instrument selected for its vocalisation.&nbsp; I
+may appear extravagant, but I can only put down what I felt and still
+feel.&nbsp; I appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification.&nbsp;
+I had seen the kingdom of God through a little child.&nbsp; I, in fact,
+have done nothing more than beat out over a page in my own words what
+passed through His mind when He called a little child and set him in
+the midst of His disciples.&nbsp; How I see the meaning of those words
+now! and so it is that a text will be with us for half a lifetime, recognised
+as great and good, but not penetrated till the experience comes round
+to us in which it was born.<br>
+<br>
+Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickered
+on the wick began to turn white and show some strength.&nbsp; At last,
+however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality which
+increased with change of diet.&nbsp; Every evening when I came home
+I was gladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe,
+was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery as
+she was pleased for her own sake.&nbsp; She, too, was one of those creatures
+who always generously admit improvement.&nbsp; For my own part, I have
+often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been getting better,
+I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been an effort to
+me to say that things were not at their worst.&nbsp; She, however, had
+none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only for the sake of
+her friends, took the cheerful side.&nbsp; Mrs. Taylor now left us.&nbsp;
+She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, as long as
+life lasts.&nbsp; She had seen all our troubles and our poverty: we
+knew that she knew all about us: she had helped us with the most precious
+help - what more was there necessary to knit her to us? - and it is
+worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her noble self-sacrifice,
+so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to
+her a reason why she should be more deeply attached to us.<br>
+<br>
+It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, but
+at last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and we determined
+to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday before the cold weather
+came.&nbsp; It was again Sunday - a perfectly still, warm, autumnal
+day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from the west.&nbsp;
+The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted at first
+whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog told me that
+we should escape from it with that wind if we got to the chalk downs
+away out by Letherhead and Guildford.&nbsp; We took the early train
+to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up into the woods
+at the top.&nbsp; We were beyond the smoke, which rested like a low
+black cloud over the city in the north-east, reaching a third of the
+way up to the zenith.&nbsp; The beech had changed colour, and glowed
+with reddish-brown fire.&nbsp; We sat down on a floor made of the leaves
+of last year.&nbsp; At mid-day the stillness was profound, broken only
+by the softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spread
+over us their protecting arms.&nbsp; Every now and then it died down
+almost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if the
+Gods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk.&nbsp;
+By moving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld
+the plain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex
+and Hampshire.&nbsp; It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above
+it was spread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degrees
+into azure over our heads.&nbsp; The exhilaration of the air satisfied
+Marie, although she had no playmate, and there was nothing special with
+which she could amuse herself.&nbsp; She wandered about looking for
+flowers and ferns, and was content.&nbsp; We were all completely happy.&nbsp;
+We strained our eyes to see the furthest point before us, and we tried
+to find it on the map we had brought with us.&nbsp; The season of the
+year, which is usually supposed to make men pensive, had no such effect
+upon us.&nbsp; Everything in the future, even the winter in London,
+was painted by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no sadness.&nbsp;
+Rather did summer dying in such fashion fill our hearts with repose,
+and even more than repose - with actual joy.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Here ends the autobiography.&nbsp; A month after this last holiday my
+friend was dead and buried.&nbsp; He had unsuspected disease of the
+heart, and one day his master, of whom we have heard something, was
+more than usually violent.&nbsp; Mark, as his custom was, was silent,
+but evidently greatly excited.&nbsp; His tyrant left the room; and in
+a few minutes afterwards Mark was seen to turn white and fall forward
+in his chair.&nbsp; It was all over!&nbsp; His body was taken to a hospital
+and thence sent home.&nbsp; The next morning his salary up to the day
+of his death came in an envelope to his widow, without a single word
+from his employers save a request for acknowledgment.&nbsp; Towards
+mid-day, his office coat, and a book found in his drawer, arrived in
+a brown paper parcel, carriage unpaid.<br>
+<br>
+On looking over his papers, I found the sketch of his life and a mass
+of odds and ends, some apparently written for publication.&nbsp; Many
+of these had evidently been in envelopes, and had most likely, therefore,
+been offered to editors or publishers, but all, I am sure, had been
+refused.&nbsp; I add one or two by way of appendix, and hope they will
+be thought worth saving.<br>
+<br>
+R. S.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Footnotes:<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a>&nbsp; This was
+written many years ago, but is curiously pertinent to the discussions
+of this year. - EDITOR, 1884.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a>&nbsp; Not exactly
+untrue, but it sounds strangely now when socialism, nationalisation
+of the land, and other projects have renewed in men the hope of regeneration
+by political processes.&nbsp; The reader will, however, please remember
+the date of these memoirs. - EDITOR, 1884.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE ***<br>
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index 0000000..42cf47b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/mkrd10h.zip