ld word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting
an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most
commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it
will, is not one of those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed, it
is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so
formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it.

*****

It is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker
as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when
absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important than his
services.

*****

It was my custom, as the hours dragged on, to repeat the question, 'When
will the carts come in?' and repeat it again and again until at last
those sounds arose in the street that I have heard once more this
morning. The road before our house is a great thoroughfare for early
carts. I know not, and I never have known, what they carry, whence they
come, or whither they go. But I know that, long ere dawn, and for hours
together, they stream continuously past, with the same rolling and
jerking of wheels, and the same clink of horses' feet. It was not for
nothing that they made the burthen of my wishes all night through. They
are really the first throbbings of life, the harbingers of day; and it
pleases you as much to hear them as it must please a shipwrecked seaman
once again to grasp a hand of flesh and blood after years of miserable
solitude. They have the freshness of the daylight life about them. You
can hear the carters cracking their whips and crying hoarsely to their
horses or to one another; and sometimes even a peal of healthy, harsh
horse-laughter comes up to you through the darkness. There is now an end
to mystery and fear. Like the knocking at the door in MACBETH, or the
cry of the watchman in the TOUR DE NESLE, they show that the horrible
caesura is over, and the nightmares have fled away, because the day
is breaking and the ordinary life of men is beginning to bestir itself
among the streets.

*****

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and
parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated
mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether
you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had known love; perhaps borne
children, suckled them, and given them pet names. But now that was all
gone by, and had left her neither happier