n measured for
it. He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the
State Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, privileges,
all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his
consciousness as the signet on soft wax;--a single pressure is
enough. Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen to
see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint?
The smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her
delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of
_its_ fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a
coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it,
when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is
that a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or
a moment,--as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime
to engrave it.

It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers
in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and
you pass out of the individual life you were living into the
rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing
you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself
in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with
an expert at your elbow that has studied your case all out beforehand,
and is waiting for you with his implements of hemp or mahogany. I
believe, if a man were to be burned in any of our cities to-morrow for
heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies that knew just how
many fagots were necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole
matter.

----So we have not won the Good-wood cup; _au contraire_, we were
a "bad fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the
third time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as
any of my fellow-citizens,--too patriotic in fact, for I have got into
hot water by loving too much of my country; in short, if any man,
whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four pounds,
disputes it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I should have
gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I love my
country, and I love horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs
over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary,--whom I saw
run at Epsom,--over my fireplace. Did I not elope from school to see
Revenge, and Prospect, and