Bones and I : $b or, the skeleton at home — John Shaqi
Bones and I : $b or, the skeleton at homeWhyte-Melville, G. J. (George John)
Philosophy
Bones and I : $b or, the skeleton at home
Whyte-Melville, G. J. (George John)
English fiction -- 19th century; Paranormal fiction, English
“False logic, my good friend. False premises, and a false conclusion.
I deny them all; but the weather, even in _my_ light attire, feels
somewhat too close for wordy warfare. Besides, I hold with you, that
an ounce of illustration is worth a pound of argument. I will ask you,
therefore, as I know you have been in Cheshire, High Leicestershire,
and other cattle-feeding countries, whether you ever watched a
dairymaid making a cheese? If so, you must have observed how strong
and pitiless a pressure is required to wring the moisture out of its
very core. My friend, the human heart is like a cheese! To be good for
anything, the black drop must be wrung out of it, however tight the
squeeze required, however exquisite the pain. Therefore it is, that we
so often see the parable of the poor man’s ewe lamb enacted in daily
life. One, having everything the world can bestow, is nevertheless
further endowed with that which his needy brother would give all the
rest of the world to possess. For the first, the pressure has not yet
been put on, though his time, too, may come by-and-by. For the second,
that one darling hope, it may be, represents the little black drop
left, and so it must be wrung out, though the heart be crushed into
agony in the process. You talk of suffering being pure waste; I tell
you it is all pure gain. You talk of self as the motive to exertion; I
tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that
is noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is
ornamental in the world. Shut the house-door on him, and the man must
needs go forth to work in the fields. It is not the dreamer wrapped in
his fancied bliss, from whom you are to expect heroic efforts, either
of mind or body. You must dig your goad into the ox to make him use
his latent strength; you must drive your spurs into the horse to get
out of him his utmost speed. Wake the dreamer roughly—drive spurs and
goad into his heart. He will wince and writhe, and roll and gnash his
teeth, but I defy him to lie still. He must up and be doing, from sheer
torture, flying to one remedy after another till he gets to work, and
so finds distraction, solace, presently comfort, and, after a while,
looking yet higher, hope, happiness, and reward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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