It will
be clear enough to you, Mr. Smith, that there must have been things
connected with such a mode of life, exceedingly distasteful to one who
had the habits of a gentleman; but it was not the circumstances so much
as the companions of my location, that bred me discomfort. The people
who shared the same roof with me, I felt bound to acknowledge as so
sharing, although at first it was difficult to know how to behave to
them, and their conduct sometimes caused me excessive annoyance. They
were of all births and breedings, but almost all of them, like myself,
under a cloud. It was not much that I had to associate with them; but
even while glancing at a paper before going up to my room, for I allowed
myself no time for that at the office, I could not help occasionally
hearing language which disgusted me to the back-bone, and made me say to
myself, as I went slowly up the stairs, 'My sins have found me out, and
I am in hell for them.' Then, as I sat on the side of my bed in my
stall, the vision of the past would come before me in all its
beauty--the Westland Woods, the open country, the comfortable abode, and
above all, the homely gracious old church, with its atmosphere of ripe
sacredness and age-long belief; for now I looked upon that reading-desk,
and that pulpit, with new eyes and new thoughts, as I will presently try
to show you. I had not really lost them, in the sense in which I
regarded them now, as types of a region of possibly noble work; but even
with their old aspect, they would have seemed more honourable than this
constant labour in figures from morning to night, till I thought
sometimes that the depth of punishment would be to have to reckon to all
eternity.
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