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Page 19
Sometimes I wonder whether the majority of men ever really try to
conceive what it is to be down until their fate is upon them. I can
hardly think it. It has been well said that all of us know we shall
die, but none of us believe it. The idea of the dark plunge is
unfamiliar to the healthy imagination; and the majority of our race go
on as if the great change were only a fable devised by foolish poets
to scare children. I believe that, if all men were vouchsafed a sudden
comprehension of the real meaning of death, sin would cease.
Furthermore, I am persuaded that if every man could see in a flash the
burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable
population would take thought for the morrow--drink-shops would be
closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine
idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in
the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed
weaklings--the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down--with
mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that the
miserable mortals never knew to what they were coming; and the most
notable feature in their attitude was the wild and almost tearful
surprise with which they regarded the conduct of their friends. The
pictures of these forlorn wastrels people a certain corner of the
mind, and one can make the ragged brigade start out in lines of deadly
and lurid fire at a moment's warning, until there is a whole Inferno
before one. But I shall speak no more at present of the degraded ones;
I wish to gain a thought of pity for those who are blameless; and I
want to stir up the blameless ones, who are generally ignorant
creatures, so that they may exercise a little of the wisdom of the
serpent in time. Be it remembered that, although the ruined and
blameless man is not subjected to such moral scorn as falls to the lot
of the wastrel, the practical consequences of being down are much the
same for him as for the victim of sloth or sin. He feels the pinch of
physical misery, and, however lofty his spirit may be, it can never be
lofty enough to relieve the gnawing pains of bodily privation.
Moreover, he will meet with persecution just as if he were a villain
or a cheat, and that too from men who know that he is honest. The hard
lawyer will pursue him as a stoat pursues a hare; and, if he asks for
time or mercy, the iron answer will be, "We have nothing to do with
your private affairs; business is business, and our client's interests
must not suffer merely because you are a well-meaning man." Even our
dear Walter Scott, the soul of honour, one of the purest and brightest
of all the spirits that make our joy, the gallant struggler--even that
delight of the world was hounded to death by a firm of bill-discounters
at the very time when he was breaking his gallant heart in the effort
to retrieve disaster. No! The world is pitiful so far as its kindest
hearts are concerned, but the army of commonplace people are all
pitiless. See what follows when a man goes "down." Suppose that he
invests in bank shares. The directors are all men of substance, and
most of them are even lights of religion; the leading spirit attends
the same church as our investor, and he is a light of sanctity--so
pure of heart is he, that he will not so much as look at Monday's
newspapers, because their production entailed Sabbath labour. Indeed,
one wonders how such a man could bring himself to eat or sleep on
Sunday, because his food must be carried up for him, and, I presume,
his bed must be made. All the directors are free in their gifts to
churches and chapels--for that is part of a wise director's
policy--and all of them live sumptuously. But surely our investor
should guess that all this lavish expenditure must come out of
somebody's pocket; and surely he has skill enough to analyse a
balance-sheet! The good soul goes on trusting, until one fine morning
he wakes up and finds that his means of subsistence are gone. Then
comes the bitter ordeal; his friends are grieved, the public are
enraged, the sanctified men go to gaol, and the investor faces an
altered world. His oldest friend says, "Well, Tom, it's a bitter bad
business, and if a hundred is of any use to you, it is at your
service; but you know, with my family," &c. The unhappy defrauded
fellow finds it hard to get work of any sort; begins to show those
pathetic signs of privation which are so easily read by the careful
observer; hat, boots, coat, grow shabby; the knees seem to have a
pathetic bend. Friends are not unkind, but they have their own burdens
to bear, and if he inflicts his company and his sorrows too much on
any one of them, he is apt to receive a hint--probably from a
woman--that his presence can be spared; so the downward road trends
towards utter deprivation, and then to extinction. A young man may
recover from almost any blow that does not affect his character; and
this was strikingly proved in the case of that brilliant man of
science, R.A. Proctor, who was afterwards stricken out of life
untimely. He lost his fortune in the crash of Overend and Gurney's
company, and he immediately forgot his luxurious habits and turned to
work with blithe courage. How he worked only those who knew him can
tell, for no four men of merely ordinary power could have achieved
such bewildering success as he did. But a man who is on the downward
slope of life cannot fare like the lamented Proctor; he must endure
the pangs of neglect, until death comes and relieves him of the dire
torture of being down.
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