All who think they can catch and analyze that composite, subtle, volatile gas—neither body nor spirit, yet in fief to the laws of either—which men call “human nature”, these, I say, will opine at once, from even this meagre description, that Mr. Bull Garnetʼs nature was scant of that playful element, humour. If thought be (as German philosophers have it) an electric emanation, then wit is the forked flash, gone in a moment; humour the soft summer lightning that shows us the clouds and the depth, the background and night of ourselves. No man of large humour can be in a passion, without laughing inwardly at himself. And wrath, which laughs at itself, is not of much avail in business. Mr. Garnetʼs wrath, on the contrary, was a fine, free–boiling, British anger, not at all amenable to reason, and therefore very valuable. By dint of it, he could score at night nearly twice as much work done in the day as a peaceable man could have reckoned. Man or woman, boy or girl, Mr. Garnet could extract from each all the cubic capacity, leaving them just enough of power to crawl home stiff, and admire him. For the truth of it is, as all know to their cost, who have had much to do with spade or plough, hod or hammer, that the British workman admires most the master who makes him sweat most. Perhaps it ought not to be so. Theoretically, we regard it thus, that a man ought to perspire, upon principle, when he is working for another man. But tell us where, and oh! where, to find the model British labourer who takes that view of the subject. Sith it will na better be, let us out and look for him. The sky is bright blue, and the white clouds flock off it, like sheep overlapping each other. What man but loves the open air, and to walk about and think of it, with fancies flitting lazily, like fluff of dandelion? What man but loves to sit under a tree, and let the winds go wandering, and the shadows come and play with him, to let work be a pleasant memory, and hurry a storm of the morning? Everybody except Bull Garnet. CHAPTER XII.