nce, burthened with what erroneous morality; by
camp-fires in Assiniboia,[7] the snow powdering his shoulders, the
wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet
and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea,
a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a
fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him,
and he for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child,
constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in the slums of cities,
moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without
hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present,
and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his
neighbours, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps
long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman
this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears, as she
drowns her child in the sacred river;[8] in the brothel, the discard
of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool,
a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of
honour and the touch of pity,[9] often repaying the world's scorn with
service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost,
rejecting riches:--everywhere some virtue cherished or affected,
everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign
of man's ineffectual goodness:--ah! if I could show you this! if I
could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage
of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of
failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely
fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or
on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls!
They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their
privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some
nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their heels,
the implacable hunter.

Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and
consoling: that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the
dust, this inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny
himself his rare delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for
an ideal, however misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new
doctrine,[10] received with screams a little while ago by canting