A Life for a Life, Volume 1 (of 3)Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
General
A Life for a Life, Volume 1 (of 3)
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
Fiction
It is needless here to recur to details of which my head has been full
all the week; till a seventh day's rest and change of ideas becomes
almost priceless. Unprofessional men cannot understand this; young
Granton could not, when coming down from town with me last night, he was
lamenting that he should not get at his cottage-building, which he keeps
up in defiance of winter weather, till Monday morning.
Mr. Granton indulged me with much conversation about some friends of
his, which inclines me to believe that "the kindest heart in the world"
has not suffered an incurable blow, and is already proceeding to seek
consolation elsewhere. It may be so. The young are pleasant to the
young: the happy delight in the happy.
To return to my poor fellows; my country bumpkins and starving
mechanics, caught by the thirteen pence a-day, and after all the
expensive drilling that is to make them proper food for powder, herded
together like beasts in a stall, till, except under strong coercion, the
beast nature is apt to get uppermost--and no wonder. I must not think
of rest till I have left no stone unturned for the furtherance of this
scheme concerning my poor fellows.
And yet, the older one grows, the more keenly one feels how little
power one individual man has for good--whatever he may have for evil.
At least, this is the suggestion of a morbid spirit, after aiming at
everything and doing almost nothing--which seemed the brief catalogue of
my week's labour, last night.
People are so slow to join in any reformatory schemes. They will talk
enough of the need for it,--but they will not act--it is too much
trouble. Most men are engrossed in their own private concerns, business,
amusements, or ambitions. It is incredible, the difficulty I had
in hunting up some, who were the most active agents of good in the
Crimea--and of these, how few could be convinced that there was anything
needed to be done at home.
At the Horse Guards, where my face must be as familiar as that of the
clock on the quadrangle to those gentlemanly young clerks--no attention
was wanting, but that of furthering my business. However, the time was
not altogether wasted, as in various talks with former companions, whom
I there by chance waylaid, ideas were thrown out that may be brought
to bear in different quarters. And, as always happens, from some of
the very last quarters where anything was to be expected, the warmest
interest and assistance came.
Likewise--and this forms the bright spot in a season not particularly
pleasant--during my brief stay in London, the first for many years, more
than one familiar face has come across me out of far back times, with
a welcome and remembrance, the warmth and heartiness of which both
surprised and cheered me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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